Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan recently said that the new academic year for school students has begun from Monday, June 1, 2020 with online classes launched by the name ‘First Bell’. The Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has released the timetable for the classes. It will be carried out through KITE Victors Channel and will be also available on YouTube.

While launching the new academic year, Kerala CM Vijayan said that the government has opted for online classes as students cannot reach schools due to the coronavirus pandemic outbreak. He added, “Our children are entering the new academic year. Due to COVID-19 children cannot reach schools right now. Instead, the government is preparing a system for a home study. Our academic year begins with online classes. Classes will be broadcast according to the timetable set by the Kite Victors Channel. Classes are also made available through YouTube.”

The online classes will be held from 8.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday and various time slots have been allocated to students of different classes.

Also read: In-school and home learning will be the new normal

Meanwhile, the Union HRD ministry is working on a proposed framework to reduce the in-school learning hours to 600 hours and 100 days with equal proportion of active learning hours at home. The conventional model with 220 working days and 1,320 hours of in-school learning will be replaced with a blend of in-school and home learning under a new ‘normal’ imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Source: ANI