The online campaign #SaveOurSchools kick started by the Association of Progressive Schools (AOPS), a self-financed schools association in Gujarat has received tremendous response. The twitter storm conducted on Sunday saw over 1 lakh tweets in about four hours.

The twitter-protest was against the government’s recent GR on not to levy tuition fees from parents till the schools do not resume normally. Manan Choksi, member of AOPS says, “We received great response from all stakeholders – educators, parents and students. They all felt the need of schools and understand that the government cannot force schools to shut by not allowing them to collect fees.” The Twitter storm was trending on #4 nationally.

Recommended: #RightToLearn: Parents appeal to governments to revoke ban on online learning

The aim of the campaign was to create a massive voice for the concern towards school education and influence the state government to take a favourable decision that is suitable to all the sections of the education fraternity.

The association held a brief training session on Saturday for participants to understand how the online protest works and what they can write about the campaign. Choksi adds, “This was especially planned for the people who are not familiar with Twitter. We had 800 participants for the live training session on Zoom. We trained them to understand the focus and the strategy of the campaign and also how to use their Twitter accounts. The session was recorded and shared among those who were not able to attend the session at the scheduled time. We had a separate file for teachers for our Twitter storm and observed that 890 teachers are tweeting during the protest between 4 pm and 6 pm.”

The schools have also approached the High Court to seek support.

Read: Gujarat: Schools to launch #SaveOurSchools campaign on Sunday