Bengaluru: The Karnataka Government has decided to reopen colleges from November 17 including degree, engineering and diploma colleges. The decision came after a meeting between the Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and his deputy CN Ashwath Narayan, who holds the Higher Education portfolio, on Friday.
The Government has decided that students can choose to attend the online or offline classes as part of a blended learning process mode and would issue standard operating procedure (SOP) of testing, screening and sanitisation for the same. There, however, no decision was taken on re-opening primary and secondary schools and pre-university (PU) colleges in the state.
Government’s decision came at a time when state is recording around 7500+ coronavirus cases daily for the last 10 days and Bengaluru city alone reporting around 3400 cases a day. All educational institutions in the state were closed since mid-March when the state government had announced a lockdown in wake of the pandemic followed by more stringent lockdowns announced by the union government.
Authority had postponed the class 10 exam due to coronavirus pandemic and the government had decided that all examinations for students in Classes 7, 8 and 9 in the state be also cancelled.
A decision to partially reopen schools for standard 9 to12 students earlier this month was deferred due to a spurt of cases among students and teachers in northern Karnataka.
_Vinayak.Barot