Mumbai School Reopening Latest News: BMC Issues Guidelines; Makes Mask, Consent Letter Must For Students

Mumbai School Reopening Guidelines: The BMC said it is not mandatory for students to attend offline classes. They can continue to attend online classes if they want.

Mumbai School Reopening Guidelines: A day after the Maharashtra government allowed the schools for classes 1 to 9 to reopen from January 24, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday issued guidelines for the schools in Mumbai and allowed the schools to reopen from Monday. In the fresh guidelines, the BMC said the attendance is not mandatory for anybody, however, the students from pre-primary to Class 12 will be allowed to come to school for offline lectures.

The BMC has made it mandatory for the students to wear face mask to schools and to follow all covid protocols. The BMC also said the students who are coming back to school must have a consent letter from their parents and schools must ensure that they collect these consent forms.

Full list of fresh guidelines:

• The BMC said it is not mandatory for students to attend offline classes. They can continue to attend online classes if they want.
• In the guidelines, the BMC said the students who are going to schools have to follow all covid protocols such as wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing.
• Moreover, the students must have a consent letter from their parents and schools must ensure that they collect these consent forms for attending offline classes.
• The BMC said the teaching and non-teaching staff have to come to schools to carry out disinfection and sanitisation before reopening.
• Moreover, the children’s vaccination plan should continue in schools that fall under BMC.

On Thursday, BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said that the offline teaching will resume in schools in Mumbai from classes 1 to 12 from January 24. The decision came as new Omicron cases and overall daily coronavirus infections in the city have begun to decline.

He further added that the in-person or offline classes will resume in pre-primary schools too. “All schools in Mumbai shall open from Monday,” Chahal said.

On Thursday, Maharashtra school education minister Varsha Gaikwad made the announcement that the state government has allowed reopening of schools for classes 1 to 9 for offline teaching from January 24. He said that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has approved a proposal to this effect that was sent to him by the school education department.

It must be noted that the schools in Maharashtra were closed in the first week of January due to a spike in the coronavirus cases and in the wake of the emergence of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

Corona cases: Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 46,197 fresh coronavirus cases, including 125 Omicron infections, and 37 new deaths, while more than 52,000 patients recovered from the disease, the health department said. With fresh additions, the number of COVID-19 cases in the state rose to 73,71,757, while the death toll increased to 1,41,971, the department said.

It said 52,025 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the number of recovered cases to 69,67,432. The state now has 2,58,569 active cases. The state has recorded 2,199 Omicron infections so far, of which 1,144 patients have recovered.