The Odisha government has decided to shorten the summer vacation by a month to compensate for the learning loss due to COVID-19 pandemic in the State.
The decision has been taken in order to provide an additional month of teaching to students in government and aided schools across the State, said Bishnupada Sethi, School and Mass Education Secretary, on Saturday.
In order to make up for the learning loss, the Learning Recovery Plan (LRP) as envisaged by the Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) would be implemented with existing teachers, Mr. Sethi said.
Every year, the summer vacation starts during the first week of May and ends in the third week of June.
Now, the vacation has been curtailed and would be for a brief period from June 6 to June 16. In order to cope with the rising daytime temperature, the teaching hours have been fixed from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
The students in Classes I to VIII will be promoted by April 20, and school authorities have been asked to complete new admissions from April 20 to 30.
“As per the new assessment policy introduced by the Board of Secondary Education, Odisha, Class IX students have to appear for the Summative Assessment-II Examination. However, the conduct of SA-II, declaration of result for students and promotion to Class X must be completed by May 10,” the government said.
According to a Baseline Assessment conducted by the OSEPA in October 2021, 40.09% students of Class VIII had secured less than 20% marks and 12.94% of students secured 40–50% marks in Mathematics in the State.
Similarly, 42.50% of students could not score above 20% marks, while 13.27% secured 40–50% in English language.
The performance of Class VI students was equally poor. A total of 42.40% of students scored less than 20% marks and 12.73% students secured 40–50% marks in Mathematics. As far as English language is concerned, 40.53% students could not obtain more than 20% marks, while only 14.20% students secured 40–50% marks in English in the State.
In many schools, students studying in Class VI were not aware of English alphabets. Teachers had a tough time imparting basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to students of Class VII.
