Now's the time to dust off satchels, pack the lunch boxes with healthy snacks and iron out any wrinkles in the school uniforms. Students at many of India's academies are delighted that a new year has brought back the "old normal" of pre-Covid times when an early start meant getting ready to leave home for school or college.
Today, after a nine-month break, colleges in the south Indian state of Kerala opened, as did senior schools in the west Indian state of Maharashtra.
Children and teenagers, who have been holed up at home for nearly a year because of the COVID pandemic, are ecstatic as the joy of going to school, seeing friends and interacting with teachers in person, has become possible once again.
Since the country went into lockdown because of COVID-19 at the end of March 2020, students have been learning virtually across the country .
However, the "old normal" comes with certain caveats: students and teachers are now required to bring a report declaring them COVID-negative before they're allowed entry into their school or college.
Facemasks, sanitisers, temperature recording on arrival, altered seating arrangements and social distancing are other modifications which have turned the "old normal" into a new normal the students will now have to get used to.
Monica Rawat, a final year student at the dental college in Himachal Pradesh, told Sputnik: “I had to get my COVID test report before I was allowed into the college hostel for my annual examinations. It is such a blessing to be back with friends and classmates. I never thought that I would ever appreciate real-time classes so much”.
Another student from DAV College, in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, said: “I was petrified that my college term would end without my going to college at all but it is such joy now that I can get up in the morning and get ready to go to college and experience it in real time even if it means studying harder for exams."
Oher states which have allowed schools and colleges to reopen include Bihar, Tripura, Odisha, Kerala, West Bengal, Puducherry, Punjab, Haryana and Jharkhand. There are nearly 15 million schools in the country.
Anita Kaushal, the principal of Government Colleges for Girls in the northern union territory of Chandigarh, told Sputnik: "We really welcome the move of educational institutions reopening after a long gap. The students will have to get used to the new protocols in place and exercise all precautionary measures".
The move is being seen as the first step on the path to normality in the New Year although apprehensions are rife about child safety. One of the top academic institutions in the country — the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras, which allowed classes to resume in December saw more than 190 cases of coronavirus reported on its campus within days of reopening.