Dear Parents,

This note will address two recent announcements about the change in timings and the election-related holidays.

 

1.Regarding the change in timings of the school:

We delayed the start of the PYP and SS programs by 15 min. In response to this change, we have not received any response from the vast majority of parents.

However, we have received requests from 9 students (5 parents) for a swap in timings of PYP (Grade 1 to 6) and SS (Grade 7 to 12). The reason given is that a swap of the timings will give the PYP students more time to sleep and the SS students more time in the afternoon and evening for activities and coaching classes. We have maintained through the years that the reason for starting the SS later is that as children enter into the teen years, they tend to sleep later for multiple reasons (studying, social, biological). Therefore asking them to wake up early is likely to have adverse effects of their health.

While we don’t see any significant advantage with the swap in timings, we see consequential disadvantages of an upheaval of schedule for all the students including the vast majority who have not reacted to this change as well the loss of sleep and impact the health of SS students.

Therefore, we are sticking to the change as announced. We had also proposed a change in the timings for the Early Years students pending logistics for which we ran trial routes from April 9 to 12. We are happy to announce that the trial was successful. These are the final timings for students next year:

 

New Timings from June 2019
Grades	Starts	Ends
Early Years* (Nursery to Sr. KG)	08:45 am	02:00 pm
Primary Years (Grade 1 to Grade 6)	07:30 am	02:00 pm
Senior School (Grade 7 to Grade 12)	08:45 am	03:30 pm

*Nursery and Jr KG students will be leaving earlier in the initial period. A separate note will be sent to the relevant parents for the same.

 

2. Regarding the holidays on 22-23 April due to Lok Sabha Elections:

The holidays are as announced for 22-23 April for students. The school buses have been requisitioned by the district authorities for the conduct of elections for both days (for logistical management of the EVMs and the election staff). Therefore both days are holidays. For the PYP and Early Years, we chose not to compensate (unlike previous years) because it’s the end of the year and curriculum requirements have been met already. For SS, there’s no need to compensate because the exam schedule was changed to accommodate the 2 holidays. We are clarifying this so that the reasoning is clear and that a precedent isn’t assumed for similar future events.

 

Regards,

Fountainhead School