The 12th-grade and ninth-grade students in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou province, are scheduled to return to school on March 16, according to officials.

The date was set after a meeting on education held on Monday by the city's leading panel on prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia.

The 12th-graders are expected to take theIR first practice exams on March 17 and 18.

Except FOR those who now live in Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic, and those who are required not to leave their home because of the epidemic prevention work, all students need to return to their schools on time.

Teachers and students who return to Guiyang need to stay at their home for 14 days for medical observation before going to school.

Timetables for the opening of school for other grades in middle schools, as well as colleges, primary schools and kindergartens, depend on the prevention and control work of the epidemic.

The 12th-grade students and the third-graders in the senior middle schools are due to take the national college entrance examination this year, and the ninth-grade students, the third-graders in the junior middle schools will take the entrance examination for senior middle schools.