KARACHI: Monday was the day of big confusion as parents in the entire province mulled over whether to send their children to school or not. Still, most schools were very clear about winter vacations commencing from Dec 20 while others didn’t know what to do and whom to follow.

The problem was a suggestion from the National Command Operation Centre (NCOC) to push forward the vacations to Jan 3, 2022. But earlier, on Dec 9, a sub-committee of the steering committee of the Sindh education department had announced the winter vacation schedule as Dec 20 to Jan 1.

The NCOC wanted to delay vacations even further, for the second or third week of January, so that the ongoing vaccination campaign in educational institutions could be completed by then.

But then on Friday (Dec 17), it was announced from there that all educational institutions will close for winter vacations from Jan 3. Some fake news also followed that said that the educational institutions in Sindh had been sent a fresh notification asking them to comply with the NCOC’s decision.

Educational institutes will open from Jan 3

Dawn was informed by the Chief Minister’s office that the NCOC had merely suggested for the holidays to commence from Jan 3, which Sindh rejected.

And to settle that the same schedule of Dec 20 to Jan 1 will be followed by both government and private schools in the province, the Registrar, Directorate for Inspection and Registration of Private Educational Institutions, Rafia Mallah, also said that the Sindh government’s old notification was still valid until a new notification was issued by the education minister.

The chairman of the Private Schools Management Association, Danish-uz-Zaman, also said that all private schools break for winter for 10 days from Monday.

That said, it was observed that several so-called elitist private schools remained open on Monday.

The head of another schools’ body, All Private Schools Management Association Sindh, Syed Tariq Shah, said that the schools that remained open on Monday are not all elitist schools with different views and different schedules. “They must have some examinations going on which they need to quickly wind up to break for winter. So most of them are semi-closed, meaning they are only calling in those students who have exams. The rest are off,” he explained.

He also explained that the confusion over the holidays over the last few days has probably the reason for them not to have already held their exams.

“There were too much confusion. Our schools were also confused and the phone calls they were getting from parents, giving them news bulletins, which they thought were correct, was making the situation even worse. Then it was cleared that all schools are not following NCOC but the earlier directives about the holidays issued by the steering committee,” he added.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2021