Gandhinagar, Feb 13 (IANS): As part of the decision to resume normal classes in schools in Gujarat, the state government on Saturday decided to restart classes 6 to 8 from next Thursday.

The government had earlier given permission to resume normal classes for classes 9 to 12. Similarly, tuition for all these classes has also been cleared by the government.

After receiving a good response to its decision of resuming normal functioning for classes 9 to 12 in the state and also resuming education for first year of college, the Gujarat government on Saturday decided to begin classes 6 to 8 in the state. The government has also decided to have online education parallel to the classes.

Informing about the decision, Vinod Rao, the education secretary said, "However, all the schools of the state will have to follow Covid-19 guidelines as well as the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the resumption of education. We have instructed the officials to ensure that these guidelines and SOP are strictly implemented."

The secretary also said that initially the attendance in schools was around 40 per cent but gradually it improved to 70 per cent.

The secretary also added that the attendance of the students will not be made mandatory, but the schools and colleges will have to get written consent from the parents of the students.

The principals of all the educational institutes will have to ensure that all the facilities to follow the SOPs are adequate. The entire teaching staff and all students will have to be checked for their temperature. All other requirements of the SOPs and Covid guidelines will also have to be followed.

After almost 11 months, these classes will resume functioning across the state. Gujarat has seen the daily spike of corona positive cases come down to 260-270 from daily 1,500-1,600, about three months ago.