Sindh rules out possibility of winter vacations this year

The government of Sindh has ruled out the possibility of winter vacations this year despite increasing COVID-19 cases.

Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani on Tuesday said that students have been given more holidays than usual this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Therefore, there’s no question of winter vacations right now,” he added.

He added that a final decision on the matter will be taken during the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) meeting in late November.

Saeed Ghani’s statement comes a day after Federal Minister of Education Shafqat Mahmood chaired a special meeting of education ministers to decide on an NCOC recommendation for early and extended winter vacations amid a spike in COVID-19 in the country.

The meeting, however, ended without consensus, and a decision on the matter has been suspended till next week.

On the other hand, the Balochistan government has announced early winter vacations today.

The provincial education minister said winter vacations will start from December and the new education year will begin three months later, in March.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by a research company, Ipsos, shows that 49 percent of parents do not want to send their children to school.

During the survey, titled, “Worsening Covid-19 realities and diminishing threat perceptions”, 1,072 people were contacted through phone calls from Oct 28 to Nov 4. 

The outcome of the survey indicates that as many as 54pc of the respondents were from Punjab and Islamabad, 25pc from Sindh, 16pc from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 3pc from Balochistan, and 2pc from AJK. Around 74pc of the respondents were males and 26pc females, 82pc belonged to urban and 18pc to rural areas.