Muharram holiday called off, schools scramble to mark 3rd anniv of NEP
In a lot of schools, where the telecast was organised, a majority of teachers and children who took part lived nearby.
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Students and teachers watch live telecast of a programme on the third anniversary of National Education Policy, at a school in Vadodara on Saturday. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana) After a late-night directive by the state government that sought to call off the public holiday for Muharram to organise the live telecast of the third anniversary of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, several government schools in Vadodara could not follow the directions apparently due to paucity of time. In a lot of schools, where the telecast was organised, a majority of teachers and children who took part lived nearby.
The circular was issued late Friday night by the Gujarat Council of School Education to District Primary Education Officers and District Education Officers, under instructions from the Centre. It stated that government schools should organise the live telecast of the NEP event that was to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10 am Saturday.
An education officer from the Central Gujarat district, where most schools were unable to hold the event, said, “The circular meant that the schools had to be opened on a public holiday but it was sent so late at night that even the chief education officers of the district may have missed it. The instructions were communicated to most headmasters only in the morning. Being a weekend, several teachers were also unavailable as they travel back home for the weekend. We still tried.”
Of the 121 schools run by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), several remained closed as officials and headmasters “missed” the late-night circular, said people in the know. At some civic-body-run schools, a few teachers turned up and personally called up parents of wards who live nearby.
“The District Education Officer had sent me the circular late on Friday night. I saw it in the morning. The teachers
and principals of the school had been told to try their best and they did so… In some schools, where teachers could come at short notice, they also asked students living close by to join. We did not enforce it upon anyone,” VMC School Board Chairman Minesh Pandya told The Indian Express.
A teacher of a VMC school said that despite attempts, only four students could be called. “We have a mixed neighbourhood and we consciously did not call up students from the minority community knowing that they were observing a religious ritual today… Many of our other students said they were out travelling as it was a weekend. Some of our teachers, too, could not make it as they had planned family outings knowing that it would be a holiday. We did manage to hold the telecast with whoever joined voluntarily,” the teacher said.
Officials said that several government schools in districts of Chhota Udepur, Dahod and Vadodara, where heavy rain has caused a flood-like situation since Friday, remained closed for safety reasons and could not organise the event.
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