Tamil Nadu

As schools reopen in TN, parents anxious about safety of kids on campus

Schools have put in place a slew of measures, including cleaning campus, sanitising, and vaccinating teaching and non-teaching staff to ensure maximum safety.
Entrance of a school in Chennai with students standing outside
Entrance of a school in Chennai with students standing outside
Written by:
Sreedevi Jayarajan

Class 9 to 12 students in Tamil Nadu are going back to schools after 1.5 years of online classes. But not all is hunky dory behind the scene. Speaking to TNM, parents and teachers say that beyond the warm welcomes and happy reunions of students and staff, there is a pall of anxiety and uncertainty with restarting on-campus classes. 

Schools have put in place a slew of measures, including cleaning campus, sanitising, and vaccinating teaching and non-teaching staff to ensure maximum safety. Not more than 20 students are seated in a classroom. Students are asked to come to campus only on alternate days with a hybrid lesson plan introduced in classes. These measures were taken based on a Tamil Nadu Government Order with guidelines for schools to practise when they reopen.

However, certain private schools have reported that the government has not extended its workforce or resources to ensure proper disinfection and sanitisation of schools. A week before reopening, cleaning staff at Sri Sankara CBSE and Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Chennai’s Pammal cleaned the entire campus, without assistance from the local body. “We purchased bleaching powder packets, sanitisers for all students, soaps and disinfectants for toilets and other material using the school’s funds to ensure safety on campus, despite the Pallavaram Municipality (local body) promising to send workers to disinfect the campus,” says Sri Priya, Principal of Sri Sankara CBSE and Matriculation School in Pammal. 

The school has 500 odd students in classes 9 to 12, 20 teaching staff and 10 non-teaching staff coming to campus. The management has split each batch into three sections to ensure physically distanced seating. “We have instructed students to carry their own sanitisers and have placed sanitisers everywhere, and soaps in the toilets,” Sri Priya adds. The school has also submitted the vaccination certificates of all its teaching staff taking on-campus classes to the district Chief Educational Officer (CEO), as instructed by the state government. Sanitary inspectors and medical officials from the municipality have also been regularly inspecting the schools to ensure that COVID-19 measures are put in place. 

Consent letters and hybrid classes 

On September 1, most schools welcomed a bulk of their children back to school. A photograph of the staff of a private school in Royapettah welcoming students with candy and notebooks even went viral on Twitter. However, schools are allowing students to opt for online classes if they are unwilling to attend physical classes and risk exposure.

The school managements are collecting consent forms from parents for students to attend on-campus classes. Consenting parents can send their children to school, and the others can continue to attend classes online. 

“The teachers take classes both offline and online. We have a screen facing the blackboard and the students who have logged in from their houses can see what the teacher is teaching,” explains Kabir*, a class 9 student of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Taylor’s Road. The school is also following a hybrid lesson plan where students visit the campus on alternate days and take online classes for the rest of the week. 

In Sri Sankara, students have been asked to report in shifts to avoid crowding. “We release one section of 20 students at 1 pm and the next section at 1:10 or 1:15 so that only a small group of students are outside at a given point and all the students do not come out when the bell rings,” says Sri Priya. Physical education hours, school assemblies and cultural events have been done away with in all schools based on government orders.  

Students with comorbidities 

Children with comorbid conditions, including diabetes, asthma and other issues can continue with online classes. “We have left it to the parents to take a call. They know how much their ward can handle. If it gets too much, they should not send the child to school. While masks are mandated, students who have asthma and wheezing are allowed to go to isolated corners, remove their masks and relax at frequent intervals. We have allowed children to wear three layered masks of whichever material is comfortable for them,” Sri Priya adds. 

Speaking to TNM, Saritha S, mother of a class 9 student in a private school in Chennai says that despite the options given to parents, things can be unpredictable in class. “My son came back home and told me that there was no mask compliance. There was one student who had a headache and was lying down in class. In such cases where children are not well, parents should take care to not send them to school in the present situation. The school too should immediately inform the parents and send the children back,” she adds. She also states that there was an evident lack of communication to parents from the school regarding safety norms introduced for students. “They sent a circular stating that the state government orders have been followed. However, it would have been nice if they had addressed parents' concerns or held a PTA meeting prior to reopening schools,” she adds. 

While healthy children are still considered to be a low risk category for COVID-19 as far as hospitalisation and death go, there are concerns about variants affecting this currently unvaccinated age-group. Further, even if they are not at risk from the virus themselves, they may transmit it to adults who are yet to be vaccinated or are at high risk.

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