"The Covid contagion has drastically impacted students' skills and competencies in writing due to long period of school closure. Reading and writing are foundational skills in primary years of learning which sadly our students are being deprived of for the last two years. The need of the hour is to provide maximum opportunities for holistic development and school is the ideal place to forge this," Sudha Acharya, NPSC Chairperson, said in the letter.

"The choice of catering to both online mode and normal school is not only a hindrance in delivering quality education but has also overburdened the teaching fraternity. This is somehow compromising with our vision of making education inclusive, leaving no one behind," she added.

Acharya, who is also principal of the ITL Public School, Dwarka, further said, "We humbly request you to kindly provide unconditional reopening of schools for complete learning remediation. Once children return back to school, we can track in detail the progress as well as the uniqueness of each learner in the cognitive, affective, socio-emotional, and psychomotor domains".

Following prolonged closure, schools in Delhi reopened for classes 9 to 12 on February 7, while classes nursery to 8 reopened from February 18 as the virus-induced restrictions eased.?

While the Centre has dropped the clause that mandated parental consent for students to physically attend classes from its guidelines, the Delhi government has decided to continue with it.

With PTI inputs.