All Gzb schools to stay shut on Dec 27-28 due to coldwave
A day after stating that schools in Ghaziabad would not be closed because of the cold, the Ghaziabad district magistrate on, Thursday , directed closure of all schools, public and private of all education boards, on December 27 and 28 in wake of prevailing coldwave conditions.
When asked specifically whether the schools were being shut sensing possible violence at the protests against the new citizenship law (CAA), district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey denied the correlation. “The decision was taken in wake of the severe coldwave, which has been prevalent for the past few days. It will be feasible that schools are closed for two days. December 29 will be a Sunday. So, the schools will now open on Monday, December 30,” Pandey said.
However, some academicians HT spoke with said district officials had said schools closure was indeed in anticipation of violence.
On previous occasions when the coldwave has become intense, the district administration has staggered school timings 9.30am-3pm to accommodate for loss of academic time.
The decision is likely to affect students of 180-odd CBSE schools and another 15 ICSE-schools besides 600-odd schools of the UP government and other senior secondary government schools in the district, and especially cost about 60,000 students of class 10 and 12 who are preparing for pre-baord examinations and internal assessments, which may get delayed as a result frequent school closures.
“An academic calendar has about 180 days. This year, we lost 10 days out of this. In some schools, the pre-board exams have already been postponed due to frequent orders for school closure. But it is an administrative order (closure on Friday-Saturday) and we will have to comply,” coordinator of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and principal of DPS-Ghaziabad Jyoti Gupta said.
Meanwhile, officials of the Indian Meterological Department (IMD) have predicted that the minimum temperature will likely touch 4° Celsius on December 28/29 and the air quality is also likely to worsen and enter ‘severe’.
“The rising incidence of respiratory problems like cold and cough in school kids is increasing tremendously because of the pollution in Delhi-NCR. Children are suffering from acute bronchitis, viral and bacterial Pneumonia, lower respiratory tract infection as a result. Due to winter chill we are receiving about 15-20 daily cases of children in age group 5 to 14 year due to such infections,” said Dr Sumit Kumar, consultant paediatrician of Columbia Asia Hospital, Ghaziabad.