From: President, Tibetan Children’s Village Head Office, Dharamshala
To: TCV Sponsors
Date: 27th July, 2020
Subject: Wuhan COVID-19 Pandemic – TCV Safe
Firstly, I deeply apologize that it has taken me some months to inform our dear sponsors and friends on how we are coping up with this unprecedented Wuhan COVID-19 global pandemic.
Here in India, after lifting of the lockdown-3 at the end of May 2020, the situation on the spread of this viral disease has gone like wild fire mainly because of people’s migration and the Government trying hard to bring the country’s economy back to normal.
All the talks about social distancing in a country with 1.2 billion people are difficult and as a result, today India is the third largest country infected after Brazil and the United States. Although the reported infected cases have now crossed over 1.3 million but the consoling part is that the recovery rate is quite high at 63.5% and death rate low at 2.37% and active cases at 34.17%, which is something to hope for the better. And in this regard we continue to say our prayers.
Despite the grave situation, I am happy to inform you that our children, home mothers and coworkers in all our branches are safe and sound. At the same time, we continue to take every step of precautionary measures including creation of quarantine facilities within the campus itself if need arise although except Ladakh, all other branches do not fall under the hotspot danger zones.
At the time of my last notification in May, we had a total of around 900 children during the lockdown period. This has now come down to 382 children remaining in our schools. This number has come down mainly because class X and XII students have now left our schools early this month for their homes.
As informed earlier, our schools have been closed since 3rd March and all other schools in India since the time of lockdown-1 period. We were hopeful the Central Government would announce school reopening from the first week of June but this was not to be because of the situation getting worse and too dangerous for children.
It is now expected that the Government might announce the reopening from mid-August but as of present, this looks very uncertain. Even if the Government allows reopening from mid-August, TCV will have to be very certain if we can open our schools because of children being all in resident boarding situation.
We will have to wait for the Government’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and see whether we can comply with these directives. If we can comply with the SOPs, our schools will reopen in a phased-out manner starting with class XII & X and gradually the other classes.
But we will certainly keep our sponsors informed on the development. Although our schools are closed for all these many months, I am happy to inform here that our subject teachers have started online teachings. Except for students in very remote areas where there is no internet connection, a larger number of students are attending online teachings given by our teachers. The teachers can work from their own homes with their computers or go to the school computer lab.
For those remaining in our schools, we have given internet connections wherever possible. With this arrangement, the children’s class syllabus is being covered to some extend but the drawback is that there is no personal touch as in a normal classroom teaching environment.
Our class X & XII students had to bear the brunt of this pandemic – both physically having to go through the lockdown and mentally because of their remaining exam papers. Some of them had one or two remaining exam papers to appear when the Government lockdowns were announced.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), New Delhi finally announced the dates for appearing in these remaining exams early this month, but finally had to cancel because of parents’ pressures and at the intervention of the Supreme Court.
The Board decided to allocate the marks for the remaining papers in accordance with the formula worked out by them. We had a total of 545 students who appeared in class XII leaving exams and the overall pass percentage in our 5 schools is 99%.
TCV Dharamshala, Gopalpur, Suja, Selakui had 100% pass marks while Bylakuppe had 96.4%. We congratulate our School Principals, the teachers and the students for this excellent result that made us all very proud.
The students will now proceed for their higher studies as and when the college admissions start in September or so. Since our expenses on higher studies is the largest, I appeal to all our sponsors to continue to support them in their higher studies to realize their academic aspirations and achieve in life to serve “Others Before Self” as TCV motto enshrines.
The class X Board exam result was equally encouraging. We had a total of 602 students who appeared with overall 92.15% passed. They will now move to our branch schools for their +2 level schooling into Science, Commerce and Humanities subjects – Science to TCV Selakui, Science & Commerce to TCV Bylakuppe while Humanities to TCV Suja, Gopalpur and Dharamshala.
We are still working from our homes and having no school activities, we deeply regret that we will not be bringing out the summer issue of our newsletter “Metok”. But we are hopeful of bringing out the winter issue before the close of the year.
I am sorry for this rather long letter but before I wind up I take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude and thanks for your continued support for the care and education of our children.
To sustain the life giving works of the organization, we will continue to stand in need of your financial support and goodwill.
THANK YOU! With best wishes and stay safe!
Yours sincerely,
S/d (Thupten Dorjee)