Karnataka has no plans of declaring any further holidays for schools and colleges due to a rise in cases. "We are not going to declare holidays to schools and colleges across the state," said BC Nagesh, Primary and Secondary Education Minister of Karnataka. While addressing media during his visit to Tiptur, the minister clearly stated that ensuring uninterrupted education was important and hence there will be no holidays. "We have shut schools and colleges for almost 18 months due to the pandemic. Though there were online classes, all the children didn't have access to mobile phones and television. If we shut down the schools again, it will impact the education of kids."
The minister further stressed that the Health Department is actively working and monitoring the COVID cases in educational institutions carefully. "We know that the positive cases have been detected in SDM medical college in Dharwad, nursing colleges in Mysuru, Bengaluru, an international school in Bengaluru and a few cases in private PU college. However, there are no COVID cases detected in 48,000 government schools. Not even one child has been found with COVID symptoms," he said.
Nagesh added, "The Technical Advisory Committee is active and in continuous contact with the DDPI to get daily updates in schools. We have strictly told the teachers to follow SOPs and guidelines. Students must mandatorily wear masks and teachers must not allow them to remove masks in the school hours."