More than 80% of parents with children studying in government
schools reported that education was "not delivered" during the
lockdown
Fourteen-year-old
Alisha Saini loves to study. "I understand everything I am taught in
school and what I don't, didi next-door helps me understand," she said.
But she couldn't access online classes, between March 24 and August 2020, when
the government senior secondary school in Dorasar, in northern Rajasthan was
shut, like all other schools in the country, because of the COVID-19-induced
lockdown. (The Rajasthan lockdown began on Sunday, March 22.)
Teachers would
WhatsApp lesson links to students, but few students could access those, and few
of those who could access understood what was being taught, survey data,
students and teachers told us. Even bright students like Alisha were unable to
keep up. "My father has a smartphone but he is out of the village at least
15 days a month for work," she said. Alisha's father helps run a small
eatery (bhojanalaya) in Jaipur, three and a half hours from their home.
"This has
been a devastating sort of year," said Bikkrama Daulet Singh, managing
director at Central Square Foundation (CSF), a nonprofit working on school
education. "There is going to be an impact on student learning."
More than 80% of
parents with children studying in government schools reported that education
was "not delivered" during the lockdown, because families did not
have digital devices or access to digital learning, a survey by nonprofit Oxfam
India in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh in May and
June found.
This problem is
not unique to India. At least 463 million students globally were unable to
access remote learning during school closures because of COVID-19, either due
to a lack of remote learning policies or lack of equipment needed for learning
at home, UNICEF had found.
We spoke to
experts on how children can make up for the learning losses during the pandemic
and what lies in store for the education sector in 2021.
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