Sporadic closure of schools in Delhi is taking a toll mentally and physically
School students in Delhi are a harried lot. For no fault of theirs, they have become cannon fodder as the executive and the judiciary tackle health issues in their own way. The Capital’s schools closed down in March 2020 when the country shut down in face of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the next 20 months, the children remained at home, behind closed doors, all by themselves, unable to go to school or meet friends or go out and play. The forced isolation took a toll on them both mentally and physically. On November 1, several schools reopened junior classes. Some private schools deferred the reopening till after Diwali. The senior classes had cautiously reopened in early September. But the woes of the children were not yet over. On November 13, the Delhi Government ordered the closure of schools yet again. Worsening air pollution, not the pandemic, was the reason. A fortnight later, the Government decided the pollution levels were bearable and ordered schools to reopen from November 29. In reality, the pollution levels were worse. On December 2, the Supreme Court rapped the Government for reopening the schools. The Government promptly ordered the schools shut once again. Parents are now protesting this impulsive and casual approach to schooling and have written to the Government to reopen the schools right away. Their logic is that pollution levels are bad both outside and inside homes and it is not that all homes have air purifiers.
What the Government and the courts must understand is the cost the students will have to pay if the uncertainty about schooling continues. As it is, it is going to take time for the children to get back to their pre-pandemic routines and arbitrary closures and reopenings only stress them out further. The world over, studies are being conducted to assess the impact of school closures on children. Unesco, Unicef and the World Bank have released a global report, saying that 1.6 billion students in 188 countries who were locked out of schools for 20 months have suffered massive educational losses in that period. The forced isolation, online teaching notwithstanding, “are fuelling fears that learning deficits will be an even bigger driver of inequality, both among and within countries, and in a way that may be hard to fix in the years ahead”. The report points out that the outlook is worse in countries where school closures have lasted longer than necessary. Its research has shown that remote learning “often fell short of the mark”. The assessment of Indian parents after their children started attending classes is also that the latter are faring much better in studies and life skills now than before. Many schools have found that students are eager to make up some lost ground in academics after their schools reopen. The emphasis should now be on not closing down schools unless there is a health emergency and instead introducing creative solutions to reduce their knowledge deficit.