bhubaneswar the state government on sunday changed its mind by postponing the earlier decision of reopening of primary schools class i to class v for offline classes from january 3 it adopted this move in view of increasing covid cases in the stateon tuesday the school and mass education department had decided to reopen around 23000 schools for students of class i to class v from january 3 the remaining 3093 primary schools were planned to reopen from january 10 it had even issued a standard operating procedure sop for this purposeon the very next day the director of medical education and training dmet on wednesday stated that the decision on school reopening may be revoked in view of the rising cases of covid19 and omicron fear on friday school and mass education minister samir ranjan dash reiterated that schools will be reopened for these elementary classes from january 3 he had even confidently told the media that these schools will be reopened for surehowever the minister again on sunday changed his statement and said the state government has postponed the reopening of these primary schools in view of rising covid cases even parents and guardians have expressed concern over the rising omicron casesdepartment officials had visited several schools and discussed with different stakeholders about the decision on reopening of these schools they had submitted reports to the government about their observation keeping the public health in mind after considering the reports of the officials and opinion of parents health experts and stakeholders the government postponed the decision to reopen the primary schools said the official statement of the governmentpresently offline classes for students of class vi to class xii are underway their classes will continue according to the previous schedule the summative assessment examination for class x students will be held between january 5 and january 8 following covid protocolthe department had started holding offline classes for students of class vi to class xii in a phased manner from july last year soon after decrease in covid cases minister dash said the class x and class xii examinations will be conducted as per schedule this year