Over a month after schools across the city started in-person classes for Std VIII to Std X, data collated by the BMC reveals that around 34 per cent parents have still not given consent for their wards to attend offline school. Most of them have cited health concerns in view of the pandemic as their reason. In view of this, the civic body’s education department has now started an awareness drive to encourage more parents to let their kids attend offline classes.

As per the data collected by the department, a total of 809 schools have started in-person classes for Std VIII to Std X, which have 71,923 students. Out of these, parents of 47,634 (66.2 per cent) students have given consent for offline classes, but only 42,104 (88.4 per cent of those with consent) students actually attend school regularly. Whereas, 24,289 students (33.8 per cent) still do not have their parents’ consent to attend in-person classes. While there are several reasons for this, unwillingness is the most common one. Parents of about 14,635 (60.3 per cent) students of the 24,289 who still do not have consent are unwilling to send their wards to school. The other reasons include health concerns, migration, transfer to some other school, and contact issues among others.