Two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic set in from nowhere and turned our lives upside down. Families from middle and lower income groups were hit the hardest. Not only did their income suffer due to job losses, the education of children also suffered. The COVID-induced lockdown ravaged the education system with schools closing down and online learning nowhere near effective. Over 1.5 million schools across India closed down due to the pandemic. School closures have caused large and persistent damage to children’s learning and wellbeing, the cost of which will be felt for decades to come.
The schools have recently reopened in offline mode. The new academic year has started. But the aftershocks of this quake triggered by the pandemic are going to be felt by the children, parents and teachers alike. It is critical to assess students’ learning levels as schools reopen. The teachers have to revisit their instruction process and model it in a way to suit a child’s learning abilities, which has been hit by the school closure, lack of personal intervention by teachers and the stressful atmosphere at homes.
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Governments must ensure teachers have adequate support to help children learn. Interventions that provide teachers with carefully structured and simple pedagogy programs have been found to cost-effectively increase literacy and numeracy, particularly when combined with accountability, feedback, and monitoring mechanisms.
The level of seriousness on part of the government regarding the issue of education post-pandemic, or lack of it, could be gauged from the fact that many school-going students in Goa faced shortage of textbooks soon after the schools reopened.
Hundreds of students were found attending the classes without textbooks. Vendors too claimed that they received only one instalment of textbooks, which was a small quantity. Parents have been forced to run from pillar to post hunting for textbooks. Textbooks of many subjects of 9th and 10th Class were not available in the shops selling school textbooks. Shockingly, many schools did not distribute textbooks to the students studying in Class 1-8th.
This is not only shocking but also appalling that despite knowing well that the schools were scheduled to reopen for the new academic year after two years of lockdown, it did not make provision for textbooks. If there is hiccup at the very elementary level, one can very well understand how well the government machinery is geared up to deal with the challenges of post-pandemic school education.
The challenges are galore. It was very hard on students, especially the younger ones, to overnight shift from offline to online mode, without anybody knowing how to deal with this situation. After two years of mentally adjusting with the online education system, the children will have to again revert to the original offline system. One cannot even imagine the kind of toll it is going to take on the mental health of children.
The syllabus has to be less of theory and more of practical and hands-on approach for making the subjects more attractive. This will be an important element in retaining the attention span of these children which has taken a hit in these two years. Moreover, the teachers have to be gentler while dealing with the students as they are already having a huge mental scar from the wound left by pandemic and lockdown. They cannot afford to treat the kids roughly as many used to do before.
That does not mean that the teachers ignore the shortcomings of their students, but the point here is that the technique has to change. The students need to fall in love with the process of going to school once again and should feel wanted. We should not forget that the students are mentally still on the edge. All those who fell back, need to be brought into the fold and help them in coping with the situation.
We must not forget that the pandemic has not gone away. It has started to rear its head again. Prioritise keeping schools and preschools fully open. It is clear that school closures should be a last resort as it does not help. COVID-19 vaccinations, use of masks, proper ventilation are prerequisites to keep the show running. We cannot afford to see children again forced to sit at home. The government has to take all measures possible in this regard.
