Kolkata: Several schools and colleges on Monday saw half-filled classrooms, as on average 30 to 40% of students were absent. The hangover from last night went on almost all day, as several school teachers and principals noticed that during classes, discussions about the match was the only hot topic.
Some city schools declared a holiday assuming that a large number of students would watch the World Cup, while several others decided not to penalize students who did not attend school.
The School Education Department on Sunday evening sent a notice to the schools, allowing them to declare a holiday for their morning sections or to relax attendance requirements.
Following this order, some state-aided schools on Sunday night issued a notice declaring a holiday for the morning sections. Jodhpur Park Boys’ School headmaster Amit Sen Majumder said, “We declared a holiday for the junior section at night following the govt order. In the day section, attendance was low, but at the same time, we had to suspend a few classes since 26 of our teachers had census training.”
Most of the private schools that had classes around 7-8 am saw remarkably low attendance. South Point School principal Jaidev Ghosh said, “Over 30% of students in the morning sections were absent, while the percentage was a little higher in the day session. The final match was the only topic they discussed, and we also appreciate this, as all this knowledge is equally important. Some students came to school at 6.40 am after watching the match till 4 am.”
Rammohan Mission School principal Sujoy Biswas said that they had postponed unit exams for middle school students scheduled on Monday, but classes 9 to 12 had written exams on Monday as per schedule. “I saw that most of the students who attended school were Argentina supporters and were immensely upset and kept on discussing the game whenever they got a break,” he added.
Mousumi Saha, principal of National English School, said, “On Saturday, our students observed a pre-final celebration where most of them participated wearing Argentina jerseys. So, they were extremely upset today, while those who supported Spain seemed happy and were seen arguing with each other, which was really fun to see.” Scottish Church Collegiate School principal Bibhas Sanyal said that they also experienced low attendance, not only among students but teachers, too.
Not only schools but almost all the colleges also experienced low attendance for Monday.