Kerala govt finalises new school academic calendar; working hours extended by 30 minutes
T'puram: Following pressure from the Kerala high court, the govt on Saturday finalised a new school academic calendar. Accordingly, the working hours of govt and aided schools in the state will be extended by 30 minutes, except on Fridays.
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The office of the general education minister V Sivankutty stated that the daily additional hours would be equally split into two. The morning session will start 15 minutes earlier than the previous schedule, and the afternoon session will conclude 15 minutes after the schedule. Two Saturdays in an academic year will be working days for upper primary (UP) classes while there will be regular classes on six selected Saturdays for high school classes.
However, there will be no classes on Saturdays for lower primary (LP) classes.
The high court had recently criticised the state govt for not finalising the school academic calendar on time and asked it to finalise the calendar at the earliest to avoid the general education principal secretary being summoned to the court. Following the court's strong observations, minister Sivankutty revealed the govt's plans at a hastily called Quality Assurance Programme (QAP) meeting on Friday.
However, only pro-CPM and CPI teachers' organisation representatives attended that meeting, as invitations were sent to them at the last minute.
The new academic calendar has been finalised as per the recommendations of a committee appointed by the govt for this purpose. According to the new academic calendar, there will be 198 teaching days and 800 study hours in LP schools. With the inclusion of two Saturdays, the teaching days in the UP section will be 200, and the learning hours will be 1,000.
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As per Kerala Education rules, there should be a minimum of 1,100 learning hours in high schools.
With the new arrangements, there will be 204 working days for the high school section.
The govt earlier tried to overcome the minimum working days issue by declaring 25 Saturdays as working days. However, the order was challenged by stakeholders, and the high court struck down the govt's decision to declare Saturdays as working days in the 2024-25 academic year. The HC then urged the govt to ensure the minimum working days and teaching hours in schools after taking all stakeholders into confidence.
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