Schools,colleges

Vacation now from Sunday

11 July 2013, 18:45 PM

UPDATED 12 July 2013, 01:22 AM

Staff Correspondent

The government yesterday backtracked on its decision to shorten the vacation for the students of schools and colleges, and announced afresh that the Eid holiday would start from Sunday. In a new order yesterday, the education ministry rescheduled the vacation, taking into consideration the traffic congestion in the capital and other cities during the month of Ramadan. "All non-government and government schools and colleges will remain closed from July 14 till August 12 on the occasions of Juma'tul Wida, Shab-e-Qadr and Eid-ul-Fitr," said the order. The ministry came to the new decision just two days into the announcement of the previous one. On Tuesday, the education ministry declared that the vacation for all schools and colleges would be reduced by 17 days to make up for the time lost during the recent shutdowns. Therefore, it issued an order in this regard, and said the vacation for Eid would start from July 27 instead of July 11. All government and non-government school and college students across the country would enjoy their vacation till August 12, the previous order added. The authorities of a number of educational institutions, however, expressed their surprise at the sudden change of the government decision. Many of them, especially the English medium ones, could not formally announce the vacation to their students or give them holiday homework or guidelines. There will be no schooldays before the vacation. The government usually shuts schools and colleges at the beginning of Ramadan as per request of the traffic department to deal with the horrible traffic situation during the holy month. But this time the ministry decided to cut short the vacation as the frequent hartals seriously disrupted academic activities, forced reduction of the number of classes in schools, and even forced the SSC and HSC examinations to be postponed. The country witnessed a total of 31 hartal days from January to July this year.