Counter for successive school holidays: functioning on Saturdays as well!
Posted on: 02/Jan/2020 1:03:01 PM
The officials of the Tamil State Government Department of School Education has informed that in order to counter the extra holidays during the half-yearly vacation, the schools can conduct classes on Saturdays as well.
The half-yearly examinations for all government and government-aided schools concluded on 23rd December, In this regard, the state government had earlier announced that the half-yearly vacation will be from 24th December to 1st January and the schools will reopen on 2nd January. However, the counting of votes for the local elections has been scheduled on 2nd January, it was announced as a holiday for 2nd January and the schools were to reopen on 3rd January.
However, the Teachers’ Associations demanded:
“The votes counting after the local elections is scheduled on 2nd January. The school teachers have been deployed for this activity. There are strong prospects that the vote-counting may get prolonged until midnight (2nd January). Hence, it would be a great hardship for the teachers deployed in the vote-counting activity to attend school after midnight work. So, we request that the half-yearly vacation may be extended by 1 more day and the schools may reopen on 4th January.”
Accordingly, the demand was accepted and it was announced that all the government and government-aided schools will reopen on 4th January.
Another aspect to be noted that the Pongal series of holidays are to be observed in a few days! 11th and 12th January fall on Saturday and Sunday. 13th January will be a working day for schools. Again, there will be a succession of Pongal holidays from 14th to 19th January. These successive holidays have drastically reduced the number of school working days. This would make it rather difficult to complete the teaching of the syllabus for the Public Examination and conducting the Practical Examinations and the Revision Tests.
As the practical examinations for the 10th Standard, +1, and +2 classes are scheduled on end January or start February, the teachers have expressed anxiety about completing teaching the related lessons.
The officials of the State Government Education Department conducted a review meeting regarding this issue. It was decided to make Saturdays as working days as a counter-measure to facilitate completion of the teaching of the balance syllabus.
