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Universities likely to reopen earlier than supposed

An impact of declaring school, college to reopen from Sep 12


Published : 06 Sep 2021 09:50 PM

The decision to reopen educational institutions from primary to higher secondary levels in the country on September 12 is likely to prepone resuming physical classes at the universities.

Education Minister Dr DipuMoni said she will discuss with the Vice-Chancellors (VC) of the universities to decide on reopening the universities earlier, considering the situation.

She made this remarks after an inter-ministerial meeting held in the conference room of the Cabinet Division at the Secretariat on Sunday.

She said there have been discussions with the VCs and they are supposed to reopen universities two weeks after each student is jabbed with the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.

“Subsequently, the date of reopening universities was supposed to be in mid-October. But, as the current situation has improved, I may meet the VCs again this week”, she said.

However, DipuMoni said the university authority will monitor the situation and finalize the date.

“Since the decisions of the universities are made by their syndicate, they will take this decisionacademically. But we will have a meeting with them again.”

Sharing the same theme, experts and officials of different universities say the prescheduled date may come forward.

In this regard, VC of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology and President of the ‘University Council’, an association of the Vice-Chancellors Mohammad RafiqulAlam recently told the media, “The education minister had spoken of discussing again to reopen the university. We will take action as per the decision to be taken in the presence of the concerned persons, including the Chairman of the University Grants Commission.”

On the other hand, Earlier on September 3, Dhaka University (DU) VCMdAkhtaruzzaman said DU has already set a roadmap for reopening. According to that, all students have been asked to get vaccinated by September 15. Therefore, residential halls are likely to be open within the early days of October.

Meanwhile, Education Minister announced to reopen primary, secondary and higher education institutions from September 12, including Madrasas and Technical institutes, as per the directive of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Due to Coronavirus outbreak in the country, all educational institutions have been closed since March 17 last year. According to the latest announcement of the government, there is a holiday till September 11 this year.