MHRD prepares for school education amid lockdown due to Coronavirus pandemic and ensures that necessary lessons are able to reach students through online portals
In the wake of the nation-wide lockdown amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, children missing out on their education is a huge cause of concern for parents and teachers. However, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is fully prepared to cope with the situation. The MHRD has been working on various projects through which quality education could be reached through various means of communication to all schools for the last five years.
The three organisations under the MHRD — the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — are collaborating to pool up all resources at their disposal to make academic content reach school-level learners across India pursuing education through CBSE, NIOS or any other school boards of the country. Amit Khare, secretary of education, Government of India, personally discussed the plan with the organisations and given directions to work on a contingency plan.
The CBSE has developed the ‘DIKSHA’ portal, through which academic lessons in various Indian languages have been placed for different levels. The material has been divided into two major areas — for teachers and students. Students from different school boards of different states would be able to study adopted material for their state in their own language.
Similarly, the NIOS has made the content available for secondary and senior secondary classes on the ‘SWAYAM’ portal of the MHRD (www.swayam.gov.in/nios). Through the portal, learners can log in and study courses of their choice and also watch related videos and audio lessons. Later, they can also take online tests. The course-coordinating teacher will also be available to answer queries, if students have any. Another major initiative of NIOS is the running of four DTH TV channels on the SwayamPrabha bouquet of channels. While Channel 27 Panini is dedicated to secondary classes, Channel 28 Sharda is dedicated to senior secondary and Channel 30 Gyanamrit to sign language. There is also Channel 32 Vagda which will be dedicated to live, interactive classes.
The NIOS is also starting live sessions for students to ask questions and get answers. It has been conducting live interaction with teachers in the last two years but now this facility will be expanded to students. Santosh Mall, commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya, has assured to provide experts and teachers, who would be available to take questions through calls on Vagda channel. Anita Karwal, chairperson, CBSE, is coordinating with all the three organisations to make available online classes to all school children across the nation.
Parents, whose children sat for 12th board examinations in 2020, would be anxious to know about the results so that they don’t miss out on college admissions in India and abroad. However, there shouldn’t be any concern or anxiety as all the boards have deferred the examinations and as soon as the condition is normalised, all boards, including NIOS will conduct examinations after giving sufficient time to prepare. The evaluation will be done at war footing and results would be declared at the minimum possible time. Hence, students would have sufficient time to apply for admissions. Higher education institutions will also extend their admission deadlines.
Chandra Bhushan Sharma, chairman, NIOS, said, “We don’t want teachers to start preparing lessons to teach over the internet as this is a technical job for which they do not have prior training. They should concentrate on providing counselling and remedial lessons online in small groups. They should prod their students to log in to the online material, which has been prepared by expert teachers and media professionals.”
He added, “It has also been made compulsory for all cable operators to carry DD channels. We have also requested to the I&B Ministry to instruct cable operators to carry the SwayamPrabha channels. This will be a great service to the approximately 25 crore school-level learners in the country.”