A student wearing a face mask studies in a classroom at a middle school in Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, March 25, 2020. Students in the final year of middle schools and high schools in Yinchuan resumed classes on Wednesday. (Photo: Xinhua)

Students in Beijing including those from high schools and primary schools will start lessons online for this semester from April 13, the Beijing education department said Monday, as education departments in multiple Chinese cities map out the beginning of the first semester in 2020 due to the improvement of the epidemic situation in China. 

The Beijing Municipal Education Commission has not yet released the official school opening date. The overall epidemic situation in Beijing is improving but the capital is still seeing imported cases coming in, posing new challenges to the prevention and control of the epidemic in the capital. Now is not the time to relax, the Beijing government said on Monday in a press conference.

Books and ebooks will be distributed to students before they start the online classes, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission said Monday.

The education commission is also asking students and parents to stay at home for a 14-day quarantine if they have been out of the capital in preparation for resumption of classes.

Schools in multiple Chinese cities are arranging for reopening of classes and some schools would arrange classes on weekends to make up for lessons missed due to the two-month-long COVID-19 epidemic after Spring Festival. 

After Qinghai Province - the first province to start schools in early March after Spring Festival - many more provinces across China will resume school in late March and April, including Shanxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Hunan provinces. 

Schools are taking a cautious approach in welcoming returning students. A video circulated online showed junior and senior students wearing masks in a high school in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, and lining up to get their body temperature taken before they could enter the campus on the first day of the semester on Monday.

China's Ministry of Education has set three requirements before schools are allowed to resume - the local epidemic situation must be under control, anti-epidemic supplies must be ready at schools and public health security on campus must be guaranteed.