Christmas vacation for students cancelled in Karnataka

The JD (S)-BJP Government has decided to scrap the Christmas vacation in Karnataka from the ensuing academic year.

With the Education Department’s recent decision to introduce semester system in place of trimester system, millions of students studying in state syllabus schools across Karnataka will have only summer vacation and mid-term vacation.

With the entire academic year being divided into two parts, the Department was forced to cancel the Christmas vacation during December, an official said. While the first semester will henceforth start from June 1 and end on October 9, the second semester would start from October 30 and end on April 10.

Now, the students will have mid-term vacations from October 10 to 30 while the summer vacation will start from April 11 and end on May 20. “There will be no Christmas vacations from this year”, the official said.

But, educational institutions, particularly private schools, are planning to appeal to the Government to allow them to squeeze in Christmas vacations during December by reducing the number of holidays during the mid-term vacations.

“Of the 19 days of vacation in October, we will tell the Department that we would close for 11 days in October and 8 days during Christmas. We will, however, stick to the academic schedule set by the Department and complete the syllabus on time”, a principal of a private school said.

Apart from scrapping the trimester system, which has led to the cancellation of the Christmas vacations, the Department of State Education, Research and Training (DSERT), Karnataka, has also overhauled the teaching-learning system in schools from this academic year by introducing new guidelines.