- Restructuring summer vacation
- Rescheduling summer school timings, introducing early classes
- Curtailing other vacations
- Revising gap between report card and new session
The declaration of early summer holidays in two consecutive years is making several schools mull changes in their academic calendar.
Over the last few days, teachers and principals across city schools have been discussing how to reorient and adapt the school calendar to the recent changes in climate patterns.
Principals said it would be much better to plan in advance rather than make sudden changes that upset the schedule.
This year, the state government decided to close schools for a week because of a heat spell.
The summer vacation in government and government-aided schools will begin on May 2. A copy of the order had also been sent to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which have private schools affiliated to them.
“It is going to be a problem across schools. It is not just in one year that we would be fighting against time. We need a minimum number of working hours. It is not just academics but non-academic activities that also have to be attended to,” said Terence Ireland, principal, St James’ School.
Based on Met data between 1991 and 2020, April and May are the hottest months in Kolkata.
Over the past two years, April has been much hotter than usual in Kolkata and the rest of south Bengal.
In 2022, there was not a drop of rain in the city for 60-odd days between February-end and April-end — the longest dry phase in Kolkata in over four decades. The Met office had declared “heat-wave conditions” in districts neighbouring Kolkata.
This year, the city is officially under a heat wave.
The scorching condition in April is something Kolkata has not seen since 2016.
June 8 is the usual date for the arrival of the monsoon in Kolkata.
Last year, the monsoon arrived a week late. In 2021, the monsoon set foot in Kolkata on June 12.
“The cycle of summer has changed and that should reflect in our academic calendar,” said Rodney Borneo, principal, St Augustine’s Day School Shyamnagar.
After the government asked schools to close because of the heat spell, many private institutions shifted to online classes. But based on their experience during the pandemic, they felt this could, at best, be a stopgap arrangement and not a long-term solution.
“While we have shifted to the online medium for continuity of studies, we have to rethink areas like exams and how much gap we give in between report cards and the new session,” said Borneo.
Most private schools in the city shut for summer from the second week of May till the second week of June. In state-aided schools, the holidays begin in the third week of May.
Many of the newer schools have air-conditioned classrooms but in this searing heat, even that is not enough, said a school principal.
“Having air-conditioned classrooms or buses cannot be a justification for not reworking our calendar, because it looks like it will only get tougher, “ said John Bagul, principal of South City International School.
No school has taken any decision yet. Several school heads said such changes will be possible when several institutions decide to implement them together.
“Such a change should be uniform instead of isolated cases,” one head said.
“We have to reach a solution that is common and done across schools. There are parents who have children in different schools and it would help them plan holidays. Sudden holidays disrupt our calendar. We as schools have to give up on many programmes,” said Amita Prasad, director, Indus Valley World School.