Summary
Most schools do not want a child to get stuck in snarls as rally might choke traffic in the heart of the city
Many more schools have decided to keep their institutions closed on Friday to spare students the hassle of commuting on a rally day.
The Trinamul Congress Martyrs’ Day programme at Esplanade might choke traffic in the heart of the city for much of Friday.
Most schools do not want a child to get stuck in snarls.
St Xavier’s Collegiate School, Calcutta International School, Don Bosco School Park Circus, St James’ School, Calcutta Girls’ High School and Mahadevi Birla World Academy have suspended classes on Friday.
Loreto House, La Martiniere for Boys, South Point, Delhi Public School Ruby Park, The Heritage School and Indus Valley World School (for Classes IX to XII) will have online classes.
Some of the schools had decided over the past few days to tweak their schedule for Friday, while some others did so on Thursday.
“We have seen from experience that if we give off early, it does not help much because by 11am, the entire AJC Bose Road gets blocked. We would work on Saturday instead,” said Terence Ireland, principal, St James’ School, about 2.5km from Esplanade.
An official at Calcutta International School, 13km away, said that in the past they have seen that if they keep the school running on aday there is a major rally, the day is spent receiving phone calls from anxious parents keen to pick their children up early.
“When we prepare the academic calendar, we keep in mind that we might lose aday or two,” said Pratima Nayar, principal, junior school, Calcutta International School.
“We don’t want to do online classes because for one day we would not want to push children back to the gadget. That is an alternative if physical classes get disrupted for a longer period,” she said.
La Martiniere for Girls will close for the day at 9.30am.
Rammohan Mission High School will end classes for the day at 10.40am.
Early dispersal can cause greater inconvenience to parents because they would have to drop their children and take them back within a couple of hours, with no guarantee that they would not be stuck in snarls.
Modern High School for Girls has left it to parents to decide whether they would send their children to school or not.
Seema Sapru, principal, The Heritage School, said: “We will hold online classes on Friday from Classes II to XII.”
Damayanti Mukherjee, principal of Modern High School for Girls, said that though the school is particular about attendance, “Friday will be an exception.”
St Xavier’s College has also suspended classes on Friday. Loreto College has no classes as of now as students are on study leave, an official said.
Calcutta University has no undergraduate examinations scheduled for the rally day. Some postgraduate departments have exams on Friday.
A CU official said the departments will decide whether they want to go ahead with the exams or not.
Last updated on 21 Jul 2023
