Manisha Boriyal, a schoolteacher from Delhi, says educators stood out amid pandemic but instead of appreciation they have been loaded them with more work
It was around the month of January 2022 when the schools in Delhi-NCR started to re-open post the second Covid wave. The teachers were notified that the session 2022-23 will not be online teaching. This was a welcome reboot. However, what ensued was something that the teachers hadn’t imagined in their entire career. It was called Hybrid Mode Schooling.
It meant the parents were free to opt for online or offline classes. Teachers were tasked with handling both virtual as well as physical education. This meant preparing separate notes, handling separate queries and evaluating students’ work in online as well as offline modes. In short, it was the worst of both worlds.
Simple activities like taking attendance, holding discussions, hands-on learning activities and queries have been doubled as some students are attending offline and others online classes. For instance, offline students submitted their work in hard copy while online students uploaded their work. Handling this dual system makes a teacher’s job doubly difficult and extremely stressful.
We have to redo our lesson plans and classes, modifying teaching styles continuously to meet the requirements of students. We are essentially teaching two classes at one time – we have to write lessons that work for in-person instructions and then the ones that suit online learning.
Students present in the classroom are bubbling with energy, which was curtailed for almost two years, whereas children whose parents have still opted for online mode may feel that spark of personal interaction missing along with technical glitches. Hence, ensuring optimum utilisation of class time for constructive learning outcomes becomes a challenge.
During the pandemic, teachers got IT exposure which widened their learning horizons and gave a new dimension to teaching and learning. It helped teachers advance their skills in the curriculum implementation, policy, education systems, and leadership with the support of their institutions. However, it’s high time that the administration should give teachers a bit more importance as they are the ones who are working really hard in shaping the future of this country.
I see many teachers are feeling undervalued and belittled. During the pandemic there was hardly any school which talked about the medical insurance of their teachers, hospitalisation; if a teacher fell sick, the schools treated it as leave without pay. There never was a note of appreciation for the community which soldiered on with new education challenges during that time. On the contrary, they have been loaded with more work now.
High time that teachers association now talked about our work hours, additional wages for online teaching, medical insurance, leave policy etc.
As much as I love my students, I’m not going to kill myself over this. I don’t mean death by infection; I mean they’re working me to death. Frankly, I would rather work at a café than a classroom, because at some point I could wrap my work and call it a day.
Nisha Prasad, a teacher at St. John’s School in Gr Noida West, says the return to physical schooling is full of challenges for both students and teachers
When after two years, we returned to ‘normal’ schooling, the classrooms were adorned with posters, balloons and flowers. It was surely a welcome change as students trickled into classrooms after studying online for two academic years. However for parents and teachers it’s a mixed bag of emotions of cheer, relief and fear.
School teachers have done admirable work during the pandemic: adapting to online teaching; learning how to use software tools; finding new ways of teaching students; coping up with the changes in the exam pattern; presenting teaching materials and simultaneously managing their families at home. Yet, most teachers faced a 25 percent deduction (in some cases, more) in salary during Covid times.
Covid-19 did scare the hell out of us. All the time I worked during the surge, I was scared of getting sick myself and scared of bringing the virus home to my family. It was thus not without a sense of fear that we returned to physical classrooms a few weeks back.
In the ‘new normal’, the schooling has changed a lot. Children too are getting re-integrated into the system. Most children think ‘it’s a relief to be back in school’ instead of interacting with teachers and classmates through a screen. However, everyone is worried about a resurgence also.
Prasad feels children will need some time to readust into ‘new normal’
For the teachers, the challenges with regards to getting children back to physical schooling are endless. Post-pandemic students do not like being in school for long hours; handwriting and written work have taken a backseat; students are comfortable sitting alone rather than making friends; outdoor activities and physical games do not excite them; their sleeping, studying, eating, interacting patterns have changed; making the usual teaching and learning style are a little difficult to maintain.
I guess we should give children some time to adjust and let them be. Keeping students calm and helping them ease back into the everyday routine is key at this point.
Students who come from the families of low income groups were the most affected by school closure as many of them did not have access to devices for attending online classes. However, they are also struggling with the transition back to the classroom.
Their challenges are different and in some cases more serious. Many lost their jobs during the pandemic. It is traumatic for their children to think about stationery or uniform expenses. This is not something that students should be bothered about. There is a drastic number of dropouts too in case of female children as these parents need more helping hands at home and can’t afford education at this cost.
Thankfully, the school management is taking all necessary precautions. Yet, if you notice, the cases in schools are rising once again. We are seeing an average of 65 percent attendance in classrooms from the past two weeks. As of now any student showing symptoms of cough, cold or fever is asked to refrain from physically coming to school. We as teachers are really worried and scared for our students. Many teachers are ready to quit rather than putting their lives at risk.
However, it appears that the dilemma among school, teachers, parents and the governments is likely to continue until the world sees a way out of the impasse, which could only be through the much-awaited vaccine for across all age groups.
Shivangi Mishra, 22, completed her B Tech final year during consecutive lockdowns online. Mishra narrates what all she missed out
I was in my B Tech final year from KIIT University, Bhubaneshwar, when we heard the news about the outbreak of Covid pandemic. I was in the hostel, studying labouriously for the final exams and at the same time enjoying the hostel life with my friends.
As the pandemic and the panic spread, we were asked by our college administration to vacate hostel premises. Strict lockdowns were to follow. So, we bundled up our stuff and headed home thinking that the situation will be brought under control in a month or two and we will be back to our normal hostel life soon. However, in good time we realised the intensity of the outbreak the world over.
With no signs of returning to hostel to attend classes, we received information from the college administration about online classes. Studying technology online can be an uphill task for students. To make matters worse, many teachers as well students were not aware of the online education procedures; besides, there were intermittent network issues. To clear the concept, many a time several students would start asking questions at the same time. It seemed chaotic and much would get lost in the confusion.
We had always been to the classrooms hitherto where teachers were physically present and answered our queries. The online classes had their limitations. We struggled to complete the course. Many lagged behind. Those who were not good at studies suffered the most. It was very hard to face an examination after online classes for one whole year and that too for final semester exams.
During first couple of months, we were completely confused on how to continue studies as the atmosphere at home is entirely different from that of a formal classroom. Sometimes I was frustrated with disturbance with family members moving around. But slowly I devised a routine. Also, as I missed my friends, I started catching up with them online. Despite all what I suffered in academic front, I am really grateful to my parents for their support. At times of Covid, we felt safe with family.
The examinations brought in fresh challenges. The weaker students who used to take additional help from the teachers post-classes and those who had joined the university from remote areas struggled the most.
The placements were also hard to come by as the interviews were done through online apps. It wasn’t the way we had prepared ourselves. A group discussion with interviewees and aspirants in a room is entirely different than how it is conducted online. We couldn’t see the expressions or the faces of the interviewees clearly. At times we couldn’t hear the subject or the arguments placed properly. I would consider myself lucky that I was able to find the position of an associated integration engineer with a private group.
Thankfully, things are getting better now, and students and teachers are getting well versed to online classes. However, online education can never replace the physical classrooms, the hostel life and the atmosphere of a college. I hope the pandemic ends soon and everything goes back to normal.
Rakhi Singh, a Delhi-NCR blogger, says being cooped up at home impacts emotional growth of school children and virtual learning can never replace the real
As schools are set to reopen, the troika of students, teachers and parents are about to undergo a transition all over again. Perhaps the shift, the adjustments are going to be similar to the ones we made for online classes at the beginning of the pandemic. Our daily routines will undergo major changes all over again. My two sons, aged 8 and 16, are students of the DLF Public School in Ghaziabad and are looking forward to the reopening of their schools after studying at home for nearly one and a half years.
It would have been reassuring if the government had rather worked on vaccinating the children before going ahead with the decision. I still feel a little scared about sending them to school. We could have waited for three-four months more… at least we would be past the predicted third Covid wave.
Many parents say that kids’ education has been hampered all the while the schools were closed, but I differ. I believe education has been fine; it is the emotional growth of children that has been impacted while they stayed cooped up at home. In schools, children are exposed to varied kinds of emotions, they understand that the same problem can be approached by different people in different manners and their eyes aren’t permanently glued to a screen.
My elder son saw some of his close friends lose either one or both parents to Covid and even though he has been very supportive of his friends, he wants to be there for them every day. This can only happen in a physical school environment.
Rakhi Singh feels it would have been better if the government had waited for a few more months and initiated vaccination for adolescents
While my elder son has grown up emotionally/socially, I feel my younger son has grown up practically amid this situation. Online classes meant he became more self-sufficient at doing classwork, uploading it and being more interactive with other classmates and teachers. I hope the efficiency in tasks spills over to his time in school too.
Both my husband and I contracted Covid during the second wave. And I saw how my sons managed their classes on their own with the support of their teachers, leaving me proud. So I feel once the schools reopen, they will be in a better position to be able to understand and love and respect their teachers better as well. The cohesion, the teamwork between parents, teachers and students is here to stay.
The most important thing children were losing out on while the schools were closed, was on making new memories. I still remember my school days clearly and most of my emotional bonds are with friends from school time. I want my sons to know that memories are the cushions that support us when we get busy with life as we grow up.
Virtual life can never compare to the real. My elder son scored 96.4% in his Class 10 exams but wasn’t satisfied with the assessment procedure. They feel their achievements to be more solid and the assessment to be fairer in classrooms and campus environment than in online. So I really hope that both the young men feel more free and clear about their own thoughts, opinions and perspectives once they go to school.
During the first wave they watched a lot of news and were struck with the uncertainty of life. But they also saw how strangers can come together to help each other and bring a tiny amount of certainty, a sense of community and togetherness. I am sure once the schools reopen, children will be able to understand both themselves and others better.
From primary to university level, students all over India are getting lessons online since March 2020 in the wake of the first wave of Covid-19 related pandemic. In order to contain the spread of the killer virus and protect the health of students and teachers, all state governments and administrations of Union Territories had to shut down educational institutions. In online classes an alternative has been found, whatever that is worth to the indefinite suspension of teacher-student meeting in the confines of classroom. The community of teachers, students and their guardians are all in agreement that online classes even for students from well-to-do families with the best of required gadgets at their disposal are no substitute for time tested physical classes held within four walls that allow teachers to understand how well the lessons are received by students.
More importantly, what is missed out at all levels, particularly at graduate and post-graduate classes, is the interaction between students and teachers that is possible only when they are physically present in one place. At post-graduate level, students will always have occasions to call on professors after the class for discussions and guidance. Such interaction is de rigueur for students pursuing MPhil and PhD.
The inevitable result of the pandemic forced absence of students and teachers from schools, colleges and universities is the piling of countrywide deficit in education, which remains to be assessed. The situation is now so desperate that in many cities, students and teachers are holding regular peaceful demonstrations in front of closed institutions such as Presidency College and the next door Calcutta University for quick resumption of classes.
Going a step beyond, the benevolent teachers in the two iconic institutions and also in several other cities are holding classes out in the open next to college and varsity campuses. In a growing number of places, teachers concerned about the welfare of students are holding informal classes for them. Devi Kar, director of Kolkata’s prestigious Modern High School, wonders when from shopping malls to theatres have reopened with safety protocols in place, why shouldn’t students be allowed to go back to class? She thinks it’s time educational institutions had reopened.
Many teachers have started classes in the open for students
Speaking about children from poor families, Devi Kar says: “There are students who are not equipped with the right devices and also those who don’t have the proper home environment for online classes. These students have been suffering a lot. All I can say is that nothing can replace a class where the teacher and the student can communicate face to face. The government and parents have to decide on this, but we are ready to welcome our children back.” She may be in Kolkata, but what she says is the representative voice of concerned teachers and school administrators all over the country.
Leave out the tier one and tier two cities, vast swathes of the country have poor mobile network coverage. Connections are available in fits and starts. Even if the underprivileged parents somehow manage to buy smart phones and pay for internet connection, the poor infrastructure will invariably play spoilsport. In multitude of families in the country, the children happen to be the first generation to go to school. They need hand-holding at every stage of learning.
During shutdown of schools, the parents with very little or no education cannot stand for the offspring’s teachers at home. As a result, whether they have smart phones or not, the majority of children from economically distressed families are making hardly any gains from online classes. In an article in the largely circulated Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika, Nobel prize winner economist Abhijit V. Banerjee who heads West Bengal government’s global advisory board writes, because of the long closure of schools, a large number of students are totally cut off from studies. Not only that, whatever they had learnt in pre-Covid days they had forgotten by now. A challenge for teachers on primary school reopening then will be to make an assessment of reading and writing capacity of students. On that basis the teachers will be required to bring up the learning capacity of students in alignment with classes they sit.
The Covid-19 in its two waves has had a devastating nationwide effect on jobs and income. A report by International Labour Organisation says the health crisis has not only wiped out millions of jobs in Asia and the Pacific but there is also a major surge in underemployment as workers are asked to work “reduced hours or no hours at all.” As for India, a survey based report says that a major percentage of people who lost their jobs in the first wave that lasted beyond April 2020 are yet to find gainful employment.
In their report ‘City of dreams no more, a year on: Worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India’, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli say: “Unemployment spells are, on average, almost half a year for unemployed individuals. Employed individuals are working on average six hours less than their usual weekly hours, and the share of them with work for the full year has halved since the previous year.” Many of those who could not find a job and also those whose income has shrunk considerably have been forced by circumstances to withdraw their children from schools.
In the process, thousands of dreams are dying young. As this happened with 12-year old Nand Kishore whose father Ashwini Yadav from Bihar working with a spices trade agency in Kolkata’s first lost his job in April 2020 and then reemployed with a deep cut in wages. He had to withdraw his son from a primary school in Kolkata and sent him back to his village. Thousands of children all over the country had the same experience as Nand Kishore.
Banerjee says whenever the schools reopen with health safety protocol in place, the principal task of all concerned will be get “one hundred per cent” children back to school. He wonders how about local governments write and broadcast a slogan that will lead to the return of children who since March 2020 strayed into any kind of work in farms, factories and markets to class once again. That this will not be an easy task Banerjee acknowledges.
In the extremely trying times of the pandemic, countless families have lost income. Is there an alternative to mothers not taking their daughters with them to do work in neighbourhood households or boys helping their fathers in running small shops or just going to distant places to find work when survival of families is at stake? Whatever the challenge, the disturbingly high rate of school dropout of children among poor families during the pandemic needs to be corrected for the sake of the nation’s future as soon as the health situation permits.
From Tamil Nadu in the south to West Bengal in the east, the states are waiting for the right moment for reopening of educational institutions. But on government directive schools all over Odisha have started reopening. Delhi Disaster Management Authority has allowed schools to start physical classes for students of class X and class XII but in a staggered manner.
Students whose families have weathered the Covid-19 created economic crisis will make good the learning deficit with help from teachers, private tuition and parents. But Banerjee’s concern is about the children who had to quit schools in large numbers in unfortunate circumstances. He is urging the states, NGOs and civil society not to forget the dropouts. “In case we are overtaken by the feeling that during difficult times of the pandemic, school dropouts will be inevitable, then that will prove to be disastrous for the children and for the country. There must not be any compromise in our commitment to bring all such students back to school. In the country’s fight against poverty, there has to be an unstinting commitment to enrol in schools all the ones who dropped out during the pandemic.” The children must be in school at all cost and not to be seen working in fields and factories, that is a blot on civilisation.
Banti Kumari, 32, a homemaker in Ranchi, finds it bizarre that one full academic year has gone for her daughter but she is yet to know what primary school building or a classroom looks like
These are strange times! Because of the virus we are getting used to a life we had never imagined. My eight-year-old daughter Akshita Arya will remember her unusual educational history for sure. A student of Class II at Saint Michael’s, she has never seen her primary school building for a single day. And most probably she never will. Actually the different wings of Saint Michael’s are situated at different locations in Ranchi. So, for her pre-primary she went to one location and for her primary yet another (the current location). And once she passes Class 2, they will be moved to yet another building at a new location.
I feel sad that her foundational years of education are so wobbly; that there is so much confusion and no solution to the Covid crisis in sight. One year and people would have still managed, but two years of this is perhaps a lot.
Last year, after the pandemic was declared, the admission process took a lot of time as everyone was scrambling to put systems in place and make sense of the pandemic. Online classes started in earnest only in May, 2020. The interaction between parents and teachers has gone down drastically.
Earlier, we used to have parent-teacher meetings (PTMs) every month, but now at the most we call teachers for a few minutes if we have any query. I also miss the fact that my child used to feel like part of a huge, diverse team in school and her worldview was getting broader day by day, but now she is just confined to the house. They can’t even go and play outside.
Kumari rues that her daughter Akshita Arya (left) has not witnessed any extra-curricular school activity
Extra curricular activities at school would teach them that there is a world beyond books or in other words that learning in greater books, and we haven’t been able to compensate for that at home or in online classes.
I also miss her Physical Education (PE) Classes. She, like most kids, is a bundle of energy but during perpetually stretching lockdowns, her energy has been confined to the 4 walls of the house. Plus, she used to actively participate in her Annual Day and other important functions. The preparation process, the co-ordinating and bonding with others, gave her memories and a wonderful sense of identity. But for the past two years she hasn’t had any new memories. The virus has taken away two precious years of childhood memories.
I doubt the schools will reopen for kids this year, especially for kids as young as mine. So most probably she will see the face of her school building now only in Class 3. One of the things I used to love the most about her school was that they used to give these home link assignments (basically general knowledge assignments) that we as a family used to help her fill. Helping her prepare for her functions, assignments etc. used to be golden bonding time for us as a family, but the pandemic has changed everything.
From the school being a second home, the home has become the school and all lines have become blurred. However, I hope the air clears soon and we can go back to pre-corona times. My daughter keeps asking me: “Mumma ye corona kab khatm hoga? Main fir se kab school jaungi, kab apne friends se milungi?” I want to be able to give an answer to that to my daughter.
Deepanshu Saini, 23, project manager of Parivartan, The Change, an NGO working for the education of poor children, recounts how Covid-19 affected their programmes and how they dealt with the challenges
As the Covid-19 pandemic is showing no signs of slowing down, many parents are anxious if an entire academic session of their children will be wasted. Now, spare a thought for the school children from the underprivileged background. Losing one academic year carries the risk of these children dropping out for good. It is one thing to get a poor child admitted to school, under right to education law, but it is more important is that his education is sustained till a respectable level.
This is where Parivartan, The Change, an NGO I work for, steps in. We prepare children in a way that they are admitted to government-run schools under RTE and continue to shine in studies thereto. With the help of our team-members, I have been running a child education programme called Pa8shaala since 2017, two years after our NGO was founded.
This
programme is aimed at mainstreaming those poor children who show promise in
learning. The selection is made through camps in several localities, which can
be attended by any child, irrespective of their age and gender. Those who turn
up consistently and are keen to learn are mainstreamed. We get them admitted to
local government schools.
The
current outreach of Pa8shaala is around 18,000 children across cities. In
Moradabad (UP), which is my work area, 535 students have so far been chosen to
be mainstreamed from across 10 branches and we have managed to get 320 students
admitted to schools so far. Here we are talking of the poorest of the poor
children, who are vulnerable to low-grade labour and drug abuse.
However, the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted our schedule. Moradabad was declared a hot-spot which restricted our movement and interactions with the children. For the first four months, we couldn’t do much except keeping the children motivated over short calls and making sure that they revised what they had studied earlier.
We
surveyed slums to see if we could conduct online classes but most households
did not have smartphones. Besides, many children were helping their parents
with household chores and keeping their premises clean. Social distancing can
be a challenge in a small town slum.
As soon as the lockdown was relaxed, our team members resumed the education programme all over again. Documentation of the children for schools admissions was the most difficult part. Government offices had only selective staff coming in as did the pragya kendras where Aadhar cards are made and updated. Many of the ward councillors were either unwilling to work or uncooperative, possibly due to fear of contagion.
Team members and beneficiaries of Parivartan, The Change
In
many schools, officials suffered from a presumption that slum children drop out
in the first academic year itself. At one such school, we were even asked to file
an affidavit that these children would not drop out of school. With the courts not
functioning to capacity, these requirements burdened us further. Many migrant
labourers had come back from big cities during the pandemic and their children
were anxious to get admission in schools.
Normally, we provide study kits as part of the Pa8shaala programme but during pandemic we also provided these children and their families with dry ration, daily use items and hygiene products. I hope people understand the importance of education and worked collectively to ensure that every child gets formally educated. Just because a child’s parents decided to move from Mumbai to Moradabad during the pandemic doesn’t mean their education should suffer.
Rajneesh Verma, 24, an Engineering graduate from Noida, speaks about the challenges Covid-19 brought for his initiative to teach underprivileged children, and how he overcame them
Though I recently completed my Engineering course , I have been running an NGO called Slum Swaraj for the last five years. It is a Delhi-based initiative to teach underprivileged children which I started along with a college senior and friend Shivam.
When the pandemic broke out there was tremendous concern about how residents of slums would be able to maintain social distancing and follow other precautions, given their meagre resources and space crunch. It was feared that infection would go out of control in such areas. But those concerns proved to be unfounded medically.
However, the education of the young
children was greatly affected. Majority of slum households own a basic phone, mostly
used by the bread earner. We had stopped many slum children from being sent to
work and take up formal education. We were worried that once the pattern of their
regular education is broken, they might fall back in the rut of their old lives,
where education is low on priority.
In the initial days of lockdown, we had no clue how to cope up with the situation. Children had no phone for online learning and we could not risk a gathering of children for a real-time class. Finally, we devised a method. While earlier a volunteer would be teaching a batch of several students, we worked out an ‘Each One, Teach One’ method. A volunteer was assigned to each student and the classes went for an hour daily.
Children and volunteers associated with Slum Swaraj
The few with access to smartphones were given online coaching and those with access to basic phones were provided classes through a regular call. We realised that in one-on-one interaction or in online classes, children were more confident of asking questions, which they may have been scared of asking for the fear of being judged by their peers in regular classrooms.
We were hoping that in these trying times,
corporate groups would come forward to sponsor smartphones or laptops for poor children
under their CSR budgets but sadly that didn’t happen. It is easy for poor children
to exit the classroom and get sucked into the cycle for survival.
Apart from formal education, we provide children updates on how to prevent or fight Covid-19 and ensure that they respect the state guidelines stay in place. Education is not just text-book learning. In pre-pandemic times we used to take children to malls, monuments, zoos, natural water bodies etc. to understand the world in totality but now we have suspended all such trips till situation is conducive for an outdoor activity.
Slum Swaraj volunteers
I am happy to say that we have been
inundated with offers from people who want to volunteer in teaching poor children.
Many people whose commuting time has been cut down because they are working from
home are now using the extra time to give back to the community. We hope soon
the corporates would step forward to support online education to be made
affordable for the underprivileged.
Roma
Aggarwal, 37, says online schooling is tiresome for parents who have to juggle
among domestic chores, office work and children’s assignments. She prays for
the pandemic to end and schools to reopen
Online classes aren’t really my cup of tea.
I love the idea of children being formally educated inside the school premises
with real-time interactions between teachers and students as well as among themselves.
Education is not only about the stuff we are taught, it is also about the
social skills we learn, how we understand non-verbal cues from other people and
how we learn to carve our own space in the sea of people. But it is what it is!
The pandemic hasn’t relented for so many
months now and I wonder when my two daughters will be able to go back to
school. My younger daughter, aged three, was supposed to start school formally
this year, but then things changed drastically. My elder daughter is in Class IV
and she misses her school a lot.
I have had to change and update gadgets
continuously to enhance the quality of the online interaction. As an urban family,
we have access to smartphones, laptop etc. which we share on priority basis, and
still online classes aren’t an easy navigation. So, I wonder about those families
who may have to share gadgets, like one phone between two siblings.
It is difficult for the young children to
make such huge changes in lifestyle. My elder one generally oscillates between
her iPad and her laptop for her studies, but there are days when she complains of
sore eyes and mild headaches because of the intense focus she has to keep on
the electronic mediums. So I have also now started connecting the laptop (net
book) to the TV. And since my younger one accesses her classes on my phone, it
means I neither get the TV, nor the phone to unwind after a hard day’s work.
Whatever free time I get is spent in
helping my elder daughter with her assignments. I am a housewife but there is
so much online involvement with my elder daughter that I feel like I have
joined a fully functioning office. We as parents have to help our kids with
conducting their lab experiments, then with their homework across subjects and
multiple assignments. Plus there are also their various online tests.
Then there are video and photo uploads to
be done. My elder daughter starts her classes around 8.20 am and one class goes
on for 40 minutes. And I have to be alert along with her. My younger one’s
classes start much later and she has also been complaining about her eyes
watering during the classes. Since ages we have told kids to use the screen
less or sit far away from the screen so that it doesn’t impact their eyes. But
now the screens have become unavoidable. Continuous and long use of ear phones
might also hamper the children’s sensitive ears, so I don’t allow them to use
earphones for online classes.
My house is right now divided into
water-tight zones. One room has been taken up by my husband, where he
dedicatedly does his work as an IT Professional. Another room has been assigned
to my daughter in which she can attend her classes undisturbed by any outside
sound or noise. My younger daughter and I have taken over the living room. She
gets easily restless during the classes and I have to then help her soothe.
I sincerely hope the schools open soon and
we go back to the pre-pandemic world. Till now there are no updates as to when
schools would open in Chennai. Since there is not much physical activity during
online classes, the kids don’t expend much energy and they eat fewer times
saying they don’t feel hungry and the portions have also been getting smaller.
In this pandemic they can’t even go out for physical activities, which is not
good for their health.
LokMarg brings you a ground report from rural India,
where in the absence of smartphones and computers, school children are unable
to study amid Covid-19.
Our reporter Praveen Sharma visits rural households in
Uttar Pradesh to find that a majority of students are unable to take advantage
of online classes. Parents say they can ill-afford expensive phones or data.
Result is most school children now idle away their time playing or running errands.
School teachers list out state government measures for distance learning as schools are yet to reopen. But poor households are unable to take their benefit. They are only waiting for the schools to reopen. Watch:
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These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.
This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics, according to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate - limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.
This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visited in an anonymous form.
These cookies are used by Youtube, Google, Twitter, and Facebook to deliver adverts that are relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
This cookie is usually associated with the ShareThis social sharing widget placed in a site to enable sharing of content across various social networks. It counts clicks and shares of a page.
