70 per cent parents in Maharashtra won’t send kids back to school yet: Survey

Across India, 78 per cent of surveyed parents don’t want their kids back in school now. Representation pic/PTI

A majority of parents in Maharashtra are still not willing to send their children to school, finds a recent survey. As another online academic year begins, and even though the new form of learning comes with issues like digital divide and other social and psychological effects on students, parents don't want to risk their wards' lives.

In the state, 70 per cent of the respondents don't want to send their kids to school just yet. Of these, 45 per cent of parents want their children to get fully vaccinated against Covid-19 first, while 25 per cent want to wait for the cases to reduce to zero in their respective districts.

This figure stood at 78 per cent in the country-wide findings, including 48 per cent of the surveyed parents wanting to wait for full vaccination and 30 per cent for cases to drop to zero. The survey has been conducted by LocalCircles - a community social media platform that has done several such polls during the pandemic - across 350 districts in India and involved 32,000 respondents.

"In a related survey by LocalCircles released in June, 37 per cent of parents wanted schools to reopen only after their children were vaccinated. This figure rose to 48 per cent in the latest survey.

With growing evidence of Delta and Delta plus variants being more harmful to children as compared to initial strains, the survey findings indicate that vaccination hesitancy among parents has reduced," said LocalCircles founder Sachin Taparia.

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