Students, parents irked at Puja vacations flip-flop

SNS, SIliguri, 26 September: A notification issued by the West Bengal School Education Department to government and government-aided schools across the state last evening informing them of the department’s decision to curtail the puja vacation, and the withdrawal of the notification this afternoon has evoked tremendous resentment among staff members of such schools in north Bengal as well as parents and guardians of students. 

Since the notification, which said that schools would re-open on 13 October 13 instead of 27 October, was binding upon all schools under the department, many teachers and staff members of these schools as well as the parents and guardians there had to cancel their holiday plans immediately.

“We were supposed to go to Hyderabad for the treatment of my son and husband in the third week of October as our school was scheduled to remain closed from September 29 to October 25. We had a tough time getting an appointment with the doctors there and we had to book the tickets for the journey about two months back. But we cancelled our tickets and our appointment with the doctors after we learnt of the notification last evening,” said Purnima Roy, a senior teacher at a government-aided school in Jalpaiguri.

“The government today decided to roll back its decision. But it will now be very difficult for us to get an appointment with the doctors in October and we will have to pay through our noses to book the tickets for the journey,” she added.

The decision also angered many guardians of students, who felt that long and frequent vacations this year would adversely affect the progress of their studies.

“Frequent holidays do not only hamper the concentration of children. It also increases the load of studies on them. There was no real need to advance the summer vacations from May 18 to May 2 in the schools and then keep them closed from June 16 to 25 in view of the prevailing heat wave in the state as it was not as hot here as it was in the southern districts of the state.  Now that the education department has decided to keep schools closed till October 25, the students will have an extremely tough time preparing for the annual examinations as very few classes can be held before the examinations because of the month-long vacation,” they pointed out.