BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government on Saturday announced to curtail summer vacation of schools to compensate for the loss in studies due to Covid-19 in the past two years.
The government is also mulling a similar plan for colleges and universities.
The summer break for schools will be from June 6 to June 16.
As June 5 is a Sunday, the institutions will remain closed for a brief period of 12 days compared to at least 40 days from May 5 in previous years, the school and mass education department said. School and mass education secretary Bishnupada Sethi said the schools will implement a learning recovery plan (LRP) envisaged by the Odisha School Education Programme Authority OSEPA (OSEPA) to make up for the learning losses due to the pandemic in the last two years in the one-month extra period.
Keeping in mind the scorching summer, the government has decided to keep the teaching hours from 6 am to 9 am from May 1 to June 5.
Though the maximum day temperature in most parts of the state hovers above 40 degrees Celsius during May and June, early morning hours remain comfortable with temperature below 30 degrees Celsius.
Govt mulls 2-wk break for colleges, univs too
Currently, school timing from classes I to VIII is 6.30 am to 10.30 am and from classes IX it is 6.30 am to 11.30 am. This arrangement will continue till April 30, the government said.
The class promotion for students from classes I to VIII will be made by April 20 while new admission and re-admission for classes I to IX will be held from April 20 to April 30.
School and mass education minister Samir Ranjan Dash said the new academic session for schools will start from May 1 from when students will study in the classes to which they are promoted this month.
According to the New Assessment Policy introduced by the Board of Secondary Education (BSE), Odisha, class IX students will appear for summative assessment-II examination. The class IX students' examination and declaration of their result and promotion to class X will be completed by May 10.
Sources said the government is mulling a vacation of around two weeks for the higher educational institutions as well. Higher education minister Arun Sahoo said consultations were still on for vacation in colleges and universities. "We will take a decision soon," he said.
Students, parents and teachers have a mixed response to the shortened vacation. Akash Sahu, a class IX student from Sambalpur, said going to school in summer is a welcome move.
