Bangalore students steer clear of holiday confusion

Spiking fears of poor atttendance in view of the last minute cancellation of the two-day holiday, students of city schools and colleges on Friday turned up in full numbers at their institutions.

The holiday declared on Friday and Saturday as a precautionary measure to tackle any adverse reaction to the anticipated Allahabad high court verdict on the Ayodhya dispute had been withdrawn late on Thursday evening, after the Supreme Court stayed the judgment.

The attendance in most schools was 95%. “I myself visited seven schools in Bangalore South and the attendance was near full,” said C Nagaraju, deputy director for public instructions (DDPI), Bangalore South.

“It was late when we got the message about the cancellation of the holiday. So we were not able to communicate the news to our students and parents properly. Yet, the attendance was pretty good on Friday,” said D Shashi Kumar, principal, Blossoms School.

Some schools put technology to good use on the occasion. Sophia High School sent out SMSes to its students as soon as the news of the verdict being postponed was out. “There was no confusion this morning since we clearly informed the students that the holiday had been called off,” said Christia Joseph, a staff of the school.

Bishop Cotton Girls’ School, where term exams are going on, too informed its students that the school would be working by calling their homes. The school conducted its exams. But some students claimed that they heard about the holiday cancellation from their friends and did not receive any alert from the school.

Attendance in the colleges was near full. “Most students came to classes and we did not find any major difference in today’s attendance,” said BS Jayashree, principal, Vijaya PU College.
M Prakash, principal, Seshadripurm First Grade College, said, “It was normal and the attendance was 90%.”

St Joseph’s Pre-University College used its website to alert the students about the cancellation of the holiday. “Many students called the college to find out. We asked them to pass on the information to their friends,” said Anil Veigas, counsellor at the college.

Students use Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones and if they are used to spread the word, the message travels very fast, he added.
Ashraya RS, student of St Joseph’s College of Business Administration, learnt about the cancellation of the holiday by logging into the college Facebook community. “Most of my classmates are on Facebook and their status message indicated that it was a working day,” she said.