Chennai: Amid rise in number of cases and emergence of school clusters in districts like Thanjavur, the Tamilnadu government on Saturday ordered closure of schools for classes 9, 10, 11 from 22 March until further orders.
In a release here, Chief Secretary Rajeev Ranjan said the hostels for these classes would also be closed till further orders, while announcing continuance of digital and online
classes for these students.
However, schools for Class 12 would be allowed to continue taking into account that the students had to sit for board exams. The hostels for them would also continue to function by following the Standard Operating Procedures issued by the government.
The decision to shut schools for classes 9, 10, 11 were taken based on the recommendations of the Directorate of public health and disease prevention and after discussions with public
health and family welfare, school education and revenue and disaster management departments.
The schools for classes 9, 10, 11 were closed in view of the rising cases and to prevent spread of virus from students to public.
The government also announced that barring the Tamilnadu State board, tenth standard exams to be conducted by other boards would be held as scheduled.
Special classes and functioning of hostels were also allowed for them.
The schools which were closed in March last year, in view of the Covid pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, was oepned for classes 10 and 12 on 19 January this year and for clases
9 and 11 on 8 February, based on the views of the district collectors and healthcare experts taking into account the significant drop in cases.
However, the sudden rise in positive cases during the last few days–yesterday it crossed 1,000 in Tamilnadu–the government ordered closure of schools for classes 9, 10 and 11 from Monday.