The Karnataka government has decided to reopen schools for offline classes for the students of Class 6-8 from September 6. While the classes will be continued for only five days a week, the rest of the two days will be used for sanitization, according to local reports.
The classes will be held with 50% students in attendance. Ever since the lockdown was imposed in March 2020, this is the first time that the state government has allowed reopening of schools for these students.
Schools in Karnataka have already reopened for Class 8 to 12 students.
Local reports suggest that the decision to reopen schools was taken at a meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on COVID-19. The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in Bengaluru on August 30.
While announcing the reopening of schools, Revenue Minister R Ashok said that the classes will be resumed only in districts that have a COVID-19 test positivity rate below 2 per cent.
The state has set up a Technical Advisory Committee on COVID-19 to recommend resuming physical lessons for Classes 6, 7 and 8.
The TAC had suggested conducting RT-PCR tests in schools weekly consisting of 10 per cent of the students. With the test, the committee said that the positivity rate has to be monitored. The TAC report said that if the positivity rate went beyond 2 per cent, the schools had remained shut for a week.
