The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has directed all universities and accredited institutions with sufficient resources to resume online classes as the government-ordered closure of schools, colleges and universities remains in place amid the spread of new coronavirus — COVID-19 — across Pakistan.

In an official notification, HEC has reportedly asked all universities which have well-built learning management systems (LMS) to initiate online classes. However, universities facing technological, technical or spatial limitations can remain closed for academic activities till May 31 and mark the said period as summer vacations.

In the meantime, these universities should make arrangements for conducting online classes in case the closure is extended because of the global pandemic, the notification read further.

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“Such universities shall plan, acquire, train and shall be able to execute an LMS from June 1 so that [the] ongoing semester could resume even in an eventuality of the extended closure of universities.”

On Thursday, the federal government announced that education institutions across Pakistan would remain closed till May 31. The government also announced that the closure would be treated as summer vacations and if the coronavirus outbreak was dealt with in the meantime, the institutions would reopen in June.

At a time when higher education institutions in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world are fast shifting to online learning in the wake of closures to contain the spread of coronavirus, Pakistani students took to social media last week and demanded the authorities converted closures into semester break.

“We reject online education” popped up as one of the top trends in Pakistan on the microblogging website Twitter and the hash tag remained on the top for quite some time with most of the tweeters expressing concerns over no or poor internet connectivity and lack of, what they termed, “effectiveness” of the online education.

They demanded that the institutions instead of shifting to online education should convert closures in semester breaks and hold on-campuses classes when campuses reopen in summer.

According to The News, there are around 40 million students enrolled in public and private sector schools, colleges and universities of Pakistan. Of these, 24 million students are enrolled in primary schools, 7.6 million in middle schools, 4 million and over 1.5 million at secondary and higher secondary levels, respectively.

Punjab alone has around 13 million students enrolled in government schools. This shows that in terms of numbers the real affectees are particularly the schoolchildren for whom there is no online education facility during the current countrywide closures.