Even as schools reopened in Telangana on February 1, parents in the state seem to be unsure about sending their wards to school. A survey carried out by LocalCircles has revealed that only 49% of parents in Telangana are ready to send their children to school. This means more than half the parents are still unwilling to do the same. The survey also revealed that 33% of the remaining parents would be ready to send their children to school if the Total Positivity Ratio (TPR) in their respective districts fell below 2%.
On February 1, 2022, when schools reopened in Telangana, only 32.47% of students attended school on the first day. However, on the second day the attendance percentage improved to 42%. This data released by the Education Department has details collected from government, aided and private schools across the 33 districts in Telangana. Komarambheem is the only district in the state that recorded attendance by more than half the students in the district. Wanaparthy, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Rajanna Sircilla, Medchal, and Peddapalli districts recorded the least attendance. In total, out of 38,307 schools in the state, 37,590 have reopened after a long hiatus due to the third wave of COVID-19 brought on by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. In terms of the number of students, only 17,89,809 students attended school on the first day out of the total of 55,11,602 students.
Telangana reported 2,861 cases of COVID-19, with three related deaths on Monday, January 31. The state government decided to reopen schools as there was a rising concern among many that it has now become imperative to reopen schools in the state so as to bridge the learning gap of students and to ensure their social, emotional, and mental well-being.
LocalCircles, is a community social media platform that enables citizens and businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement interventions. The platform conducted the survey to find out what should be the criteria for reopening schools. The survey received 2,332 responses from residents across 24 districts in Telangana – 68% of the respondents were men while 32% were women. Further, 18% of the responses said they would send their wards to school only when the TPR fell below 1%.