Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday directed all Delhi Government school principals to prepare a micro-plan for opening the schools.
Interacting with over 1,000 Delhi government school principals, Sisodia said “We cannot have one common plan for all schools to re-open them this year,” he said.
“The reason behind following an elaborate planning process is because we need to keep many factors in mind before taking a decision. It is not just about maintaining social distancing or sanitization alone or calling one set of classes to school and not the others,” he said.
Any decision will have far reaching implications on children and their families because school is an integral part of our social life, he said, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown has caused closure of schools since March 2020.
Sisodia, also the Deputy Chief Minister, said the agenda of his meeting was two-fold. “How should we stay connected with our children and their parents in this time when lockdown is impacting different people differently? This will help us to directly understand their situation and prepare better and how do we plan the reopening of schools whenever we get the go ahead,” he said.
The Deputy Chief Minister asked the principals to reach out to all children through phone to see if they are in Delhi or has gone back to their native place and to check if they were able to use online classes, SMS and what is their feedback about it.
He also appealed principals to lead an in-depth brainstorming at school level involving all key stakeholders and come up with a micro-plan on how to lead the transition when the time comes. “We cannot have a common plan to re-open for all schools this year as the context of every school is different,” he added.
Planning the reopening of school is a challenging task because apart from academic we have to keep many other factors in mind like health, safety, trust, emotional well being, and so on, he said, adding that the other challenge is that all these have to be done without extra financial resources from the government.
A “Preparatory Planning Framework for Heads of Schools” has been issued by the department of education on Tuesday to help the schools formulate the strategy, he said.
As per this framework, all head of schools will first meet in a cluster of about 10 to discuss about the issues that they need to keep in mind while planning for their school, he added.
Sisodia further said that principals have been asked to submit their school level plan to DDE (zone) and DDE (district) should study it. DDE (district) shall present a district wise plan to Deputy Chief Minister after June 5.
Explaining the planning framework, the Deputy Chief Minister said, it has three broad components:
“What we need to keep in mind before we reopen the schools. What we need to put in place before schools starts and what is the basis on which school makes its plan? For example strengths, limitations, overall context, etc,” he said.
Deputy Chief Minister also emphasized that school should follow some points in mind while preparing their plan such as how should we provide social-emotional support to all our children, how should we ensure that we stay in touch with all our children and support them so that they do not drop out from school and join the work force and which classes should come for daily teaching-learning when school reopens etc.
