The unprecedented health disaster brought by the Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed havoc on the entire mankind. While the Governments across the world have only responded in a way that is aimed at tackling the situation, the only broad difference can be as to the efficiency of the response mechanism. The damage has been huge across various sectors, be it economy, health, judiciary, livelihood, etc., but the worst-hit has been education and especially the schoolchildren.
It was indeed a challenge for keeping the children indoors so as to save them from falling sick by playing outside during the pandemic. The first phase of the lockdown was still manageable for many parents, but as days became months and months became a year, panic, uncertainty about the future of the children broods over most of the families.The fear of the parents about the discontinuation of normalcy in the education of their children has taken a monstrous shape due to the closure of schools owing to the lockdown for last 18 months.
The Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2020 Wave 1, which was released on February 1, 2021, assessed the impact of closure of schools during lockdown and analysed the data regarding parental education, access to textbooks, learning materials, availability of smartphones, etc.
According to the report, only about 35 per cent of the children reported to have received learning materials from their school, 72 per cent of them received learning materials through WhatsApp and the majority of children which amounts to about 55 per cent of the schoolchildren of poorer households, those without having a smartphone had very limited access to the learning materials which were distributed.
According to reports, the closure of schools for seven months will lead to loss of almost a year of learning and shall amount to learning loss, which shall be much more for children belonging to underprivileged sections of the society and shall result in increase in learning gap between the advantaged children and the disadvantaged children or the rich and the poor. In this context, the World Bank has also reached similar conclusions according to studies conducted by it. Karnataka, which is considered among one of the better States for imparting school education, has conducted studies across its 24 districts on the reading and arithmetic skills of schoolchildren.
The report, in its findings, suggests that only 46.0 per cent of children in Std V could read a Std II-level text in 2018, which has declined to 33.6 per cent in 2020 and this was same across Std I to Std VIII. And while only 34.5 per cent of children in Std V could subtract and 20.5 per cent could divide in 2018, the position in 2020 declined when only 32.1 per cent could subtract and 12.1 per cent could divide.
In another study coordinated by welfare economist and social scientist Jean Dreze, it was found that out of the 1,362 households in rural areas across 15 States, only 8 per cent of children had access to online education and about 37 per cent have put an end to studying.
There has been a lot of debate on many issues bothering us as a nation and litigations are being pursued on many such issues, including oxygen cylinders to health infrastructure to economy. But it is deplorable that there has been almost no or little mention of learning losses of children. It is heartening to know that the Government has launched a National Digital Architecture programme which aims at “eradicating inequality in education” as the Government intends to augment and boost the education system as “globally competitive” and the youths as “future-ready”.
Bt it is worth apprehending that these initiatives shall summarily fail if we cannot ensure imparting of quality education to all children irrespective of their socioeconomic backgrounds. Under such circumstances, it is necessary that the teachers are incentivised to work longer hours, meritorious college students are roped in to mentor the schoolchildren in lieu of a decent honorarium, also it should be ensured that technology and gadgets needed for having access to education are at the reach of every child and children are adequately aided to overcome the learning losses.
(The writer is a lawyer and public policy expert and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law and Media Studies at School of Mass Communication, KIIT Deemed to be University. He can be reached at sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com)