Classes 9, 10, 12 reopen in Karnataka, but with less than 20 per cent attendance

Schools on Monday warily reopened classes 9, 10 and 12 in the offline mode in 26 of 31 districts across Karnataka, although recording a fairly low attendance of 18.33 per cent, mainly due to parents fearing COVID-19 infection among children.

Class 12 students recorded the highest attendance at 29.08 per cent with 1,76,319 students of the total enrolled 6,06,154 attending offline classes on Monday. Class 9 reported the lowest of 13.89 per cent with 1,33,652 of 9,61,748 totally enrolled students attending classes. For Class 10, 1,54,782 of 9,66,481 students attended.

Offline classes were held for classes 9, 10 and 12, as admissions for class 11 are still underway with about 1.7 lakh students admitted so far, a Pre-University Department official said. Despite the poor attendance, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said those who attended did so with a lot of enthusiasm.

Bommai, who visited a school and a PU college in Malleswaram in Bengaluru and interacted with students, said the government plans to consult experts in the last week of this month to decide on reopening of schools in border districts too.

Schools were not allowed to reopen for offline classes in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Chikkamagaluru, Hassan and Kodagu as they have postivity rate of over 2 per cent. Shashi Kumar, General Secretary, Association of Management of Primary and Secondary Schools of Karnataka, said that attendance was close to 100 percent in a few schools. A few schools deferred the reopening for a few weeks, as parents said they wanted online classes.