Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday in a 3-hour long meeting via video conferencing with the school education department has directed to start teaching - online or offline whatever is possible - from June. "The students' year will not be wasted," he said and added, "Education is essential to life, it should not stop."
In remote areas where there is no connectivity and no COVID-19 outbreak, schools should be started following the social distancing norms and in places where it is difficult to start schools physically, online education should be started, the Chief Minister said.
Uddhav said that the academic year must begin in June at any cost. He added that Maharashtra should show the country that education is not hampered even in the pandemic.
He also said that the Google platform should be used on an experimental basis but a strong system of online learning should be developed for a long time by developing separate computer methods.
The Chief Minsiter said that those schools which were used as COVID-19 quarantine centres will be sterilized at the expense of the government.
The issue of teachers in non-subsidized institutions, filling up of vacancies was also discussed in the meeting in which Minister Varsha Gaikwad, Minister of State Bacchu Kadu, MLA Kapil Patil, Additional Chief Secretary Vandana Krishna along with Raghunath Mashelkar, Dr. Anil Patil, Aniruddha Jadhav and other education experts were present.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra continues to the worst affected state by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Union Health Ministry, the total number of positive cases in the state stands at 65,168, while the death toll has reached 2,197.
