Karnataka goes step further, decides to let schools run full-day classes for 9 to 12 grades from Monday

The State Government on Thursday decided to commence in-person classes for Class 9 and first PUC students from February 1 encouraged by the turnout of students classes 10 and 12 across the state. The government has been gradually easing restrictions on school education, and has resumed in-person classes for classes 10 and 12 from January 1.

Education Minister S Suresh Kumar announced resumption of classes for 9th and 11th (I PUC) from Monday after discussing the subject with health minister K Sudhakar and Covid-19 technical advisory committee gave a green signal.

Schools will hold full day classes for 9th, 10th, first and second PU classes, the minister said. As for classes six to eight, schools would continue Vidyagama, the state's informal learning programme.


The technical advisory committee will meet again in February second week and take a call on resuming other classes.

Suresh Kumar clarified online classes too will continue for the above four grades, and students can choose between online or off-line classes. Student attendance, he said, is not compulsory.

The technical committee took note of the statistics according to which the II PU classes have had an average 75% students, 10th classes 70% students and other Vidyagama classes have had 45% of students in attendance, the minister said.

There are about 5.4 million children studying in government schools and lakhs of children from for low-income families studying in budget schools, and their studies had been disrupted for want of online education, an alternative channel sections of private schools provided to their students with some degree of success.

The government’s decision on keeping children engaged with learning activities came in the wake of a public interest litigation in the Karnataka High Court which sought to know the steps the education department had taken to protect a child’s constitutional right to education.