62% of parents across Maharashtra think sending children to school is risky: Survey | Thane News – Times of India

A classroom is disinfected before schools reopen

MUMBAI: Even as schools wait for students to return from Monday, parents reluctant to send their children are still preferring virtual classes. In an online survey across the state, only 11% of parents responded positively to sending their children to physical schools any time soon.
While physical schools began to reopen in October, by December itself, student attendance exceeded 90%, especially in higher classes. Schools had to discontinue offline classes for classes 1-9 and 11 due to the rising cases of Omicron. On Thursday, the state allowed the resumption of all classes.
LocalCircle, a community social media platform, reached out to 4,976 parents in Tier 1, 2, 3 cities across all 36 districts. The online survey found that 62% of parents are unwilling to take the risk of sending their children to physical school. “Parents want the test positivity rate to be 5% or less before sending children to physical schools,” said Sachin Taparia, president and founder. Parental consent is mandatory for physical presence of students in schools.
About 67% of the participants in the survey were male. Tier 1 cities saw 44% participation, followed by 31% from tier 2 and 25% from tier 3, 4 and rural areas.
More than 16% of parents are already sending their children to physical schools. These are the parents of class 10 and 12 students, who were allowed to attend classes in hybrid mode despite the rising infection.
While 11% of parents were sure about sending their children to schools from Monday, an equal number were confused about whether to send their children for offline lessons.
The parents surveyed were concerned about the infectious nature of the Omicron variant and hoped that the maximum number of students would be vaccinated.
Schools in Mumbai and Thane will go offline from Monday. In Palghar district, permission has been given to reopen only for classes 8-12 from January 27. In Pune, the reopening has been delayed by a week. A decision on the reopening of physical colleges and universities is also expected soon.