Will Odisha Govt Revisit Its Decision On ‘Shorter’ Summer Vacation In June?

Bhubaneswar: Amid growing demand to prepone summer vacation to May, School & Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash on Friday said that the department will revisit the decision if required.

“We have received representations from different quarters for advancing the summer holiday. The department will take an appropriate decision considering the situation. There’s no threat of COVID right now, so holding Class X, XII exams won’t be a problem,” he said.

In view of the rising temperature, parents and teachers had requested the state government to prepone the summer vacation to May instead of giving 11 days of holiday in June, when the monsoon will arrive.

The parents had further argued that the heatwave condition had turned the state into a hot cauldron and hence, it will become increasingly risky for kids to return from school around noon despite morning classes.

To ensure that classes go on despite a heatwave sweeping the state, the department had announced morning classes between 6 am and 9 am from May 1, when the new academic session will begin with 100% syllabus, to June 5. The department has also decided to restore the single-exam format and practical exams for Class IX and X.

Notably, the decision to curtail the summer vacation was taken after a baseline assessment revealed that more than 40 per cent students of upper primary classes in Odisha schools scored less than 20 per cent marks in Odia, Mathematics and English.