Regional
"Summer vacations in schools will span for two to three weeks"
Lahore: Punjab Education Minister Murad Rass has said that summer vacations in schools will be for two to three weeks.
Talking to the media in Lahore, Murad Rass said that vaccination of teachers and staff has been started. There are 16,000 teachers and 4,000 non-teaching staff in Lahore who will be vaccinated.
He said that schools are going to reopen on June 7 and all teachers will be vaccinated before June.
Earlier, Punjab Education Minister Murad Rass had announced that schools in districts including Lahore where the institutes have not yet reopened—classes in a staggered manner would be held from June 7.
According to details, Punjab Education Minister via Tweet listed that all the schools in Districts that were waiting for the government's green signal would now come back to normal routine from June 7.
As tweeted by the minister, “The issue of Public and Private schools that are still closed in Districts of Punjab was discussed in the last NCOC meeting. The remaining Districts will have a staggered approach opening from Monday, June 7th, 2021. Please follow SOPs issued by the Government.”
In the meeting of Inter-Provincial Education Ministers (IPEMC) chaired by the Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood on Monday, many important decisions regarding examinations and vacations have been taken.
According to details, the meeting decided that no student would be promoted this year without appearing in the examination while Exams for tenth and twelfth grade would be held in the third week of June followed by other classes.
Members of the IPEMC rejected the suggestion to promote students of grades 9 and 11. They also gave their approval to hold the exams as scheduled in July.
In case of delay in results, universities will admit based on Provisional Certificate.
It was decided in the meeting that summer vacations would be reduced and decisions would be taken by the provinces in this regard.
The meeting also reviewed the latest COVID-19 situation in the country and then decided about the reopening of educational institutes, exam schedule and summer vacations.
All education ministers, including the Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan ministers, are members of the IPEMC, which is responsible for formulating policies related to the education sector.
The federal government has allowed educational institutes to resume in-person learning from May 24 (today) in districts where the COVID-19 positivity ratio is less than 5%.
The vaccination plan for teachers also came under discussion during the meeting.
The Federal Education Ministry, after consultations with the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), had announced that the teachers will be vaccinated for coronavirus on priority to bring an end to the disruption in the education sector and reduce learning losses.
In its previous meeting, the IPEMC had decided to hold exams in the country after June 15.
“The respective boards will announce the exact dates, but in principle, exams will start after June 15 with priority to grade 12 and 10 to be followed by 11 and 9,” Mehmood had said in a tweet.
“Intermediate and Matric exams would be given priority so that results can come in before university admissions,” he had said.