Case by case: How nations are going back to school -- or not
Paris: The U.N. says it's urgent to get kids back to schools after months-long coronavirus lockdowns, but with the virus still raging in parts of the United States and resurging in countries from South Korea to France, Spain and Britain, medical authorities are urging caution.
Governments are taking different strategies toward the new school year, depending on how many infections they're seeing, the state of their health care systems and political considerations.
Here's a look at how some countries are handling reopening schools amid the pandemic: UNITED STATES
In the United States, where K-12 education is largely the responsibility of states and local school districts, President Donald Trump and his education secretary have urged schools to reopen in person.
But there has been heated public debate over the wisdom of bringing students back to the classroom, especially in communities with high daily new infections, so school reopening plans in the U.S. vary widely.
Most of the largest urban districts are starting the year remotely after a summer surge in virus cases. But other districts plan to offer face-to-face instruction at least part of the time. Some have already had to quarantine classrooms or shut down entire schools because of spreading COVID-19 infections.
AFRICA
Only six African countries have fully opened schools. In South Africa, students started returning to class this week class by class. It's the second time schools are reopening, after an initial reopening resulted in new infections and prompted new closures.
As daily COVID-19 cases are decreasing, the government has said all grades should be back in schools by Monday. The South African government has also allowed parents who don't want their children to return to school to apply for home schooling.
Elsewhere in Africa, Kenya has closed its schools for the rest of 2020. In Uganda, the government is procuring radios for rural villages to help poor families with remote learning.
JAPAN Some schools in Japan reopened Monday after a shorter-than-usual summer vacation to make up for missed classes earlier due to the pandemic. At an elementary school in Tokyo, mask-wearing children held a opening ceremony in classrooms instead of the school gym for better social distancing.
CHINA
As of last month, 208 million Chinese students, or roughly 75% of the country's total had returned to class, many on some type of staggered class schedule. The rest are expected to return by Sept. 1.
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Schools remain shut in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, where the government says the virus has been contained to two clusters, schools were allowed to partially open this month for several grades facing government examinations shortly. Schools throughout Cambodia remain closed, while those in Thailand and Malaysia all reopened in July and August. Indonesian schools reopened in July with half-capacity classes and limited hours.
FRANCE
France is sending its 12.9 million students back to classrooms on Tuesday despite a sharp increase in infections in recent weeks. President Emmanuel Macron's government wants to bridge inequalities for children that were worsened by the coronavirus lockdown and get more parents back to work.
GERMANY Most German students are already back in school and at least 41 of Berlin's 825 schools have reported virus cases. Thousands of students have been quarantined around the country after outbreaks that some doctors attribute to family gatherings and travel during summer vacations.
BRITAIN Most of the U.K.'s 11 million students haven't seen a classroom since March, but children are to start returning to schools across England on Sept. 4. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called reopening schools a moral duty, and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep their kids at home. Among measures in place are hand-washing stations and staggered starts and lunch times, but masks aren't generally required.
NORDIC COUNTRIES Most schools resumed class last week in the Nordics, as they did at the end of the spring term, amid a general consensus that there is more harm for kids staying home than the risk of sending them to school. Sweden has few virus measures other than banning parents from entering schools when they drop children off.
High school students even protested after Denmark's second-largest city shut their schools because of new infections, saying they don't learn as much remotely and questioning why they can go to shopping malls, gyms or the movies with lots of others but not school.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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