Some schools in North 24-Parganas district called students to campuses on Monday for a mock drill to make them accustomed with state government’s Covid guidelines ahead of campuses opening for students of Classes IX-XII from Tuesday, the move raising brows in some quarters.

Students of a number of schools, particularly under Basirhat subdivision, on Monday turned up on the campus in uniform, were welcomed at the entrance by teachers and officials who briefed them in details about how they should go about adhering to Covid protocol during school hours.

Schools in Bengal will resume from Tuesday physical classes for Classes IX-XII after a gap of 20 months because of the pandemic. Limited number of classes had resumed in February this year but they had to be called off owing to a spike in Covid cases.

But, the fresh endeavour to reopen schools came with the state government mandating schools to adopt all the standard operating procedures of Covid-19.
The government also left the decision to parents to take the final call on whether to send their wards to school or not since the Covid situation still exists in the state.
In most schools across the state, as part of the government’s advisory, campuses have been sanitised. Meetings with parents organised on Monday briefed them about the procedures involved.

However, some schools in North 24-Parganas summoned students to school to organise mock drills.

Tapan Das, a teacher of a high school in North 24-Parganas that organised a mock drill, said: “We called the students only to sensitise them ahead of the resumption of school. We showed them how to sanitise, clean their hands, maintain social distance, sit in the classrooms and protect themselves from possible infection.”
“We called the students with the consent of their parents. We welcomed them on their arrival and showed them how the protocols should be followed from November 16,” a teacher added.