The pandemic has impacted every aspect of human life and every human being on this earth.
Life styles, employments, vacation and travel or entertainment etc, had to adapt to this crisis in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Luckily the whole world is affected so such precautions and safety measures are every ones businesses.
The most affected, of course are the young generation, who knows how long they will have to live with this pandemic and the virus is not likely to leave this planet soon. The possibility of mutants emerging which may be more fatal or spread rapidly or create other health complications cannot be ruled out.
But children and youth do have a right to proper education, sports, leisure and entertainment, curtailing any of these activities for an unlimited or uncertain amount of time may turn out to be not only unhealthy but may even damage their future life and health.
There is no direct answer that physical classes should be resumed or should not be resumed. The solution lies in finding out a pragmatic and flexible combination capable of adjusting to situational requirements. There is therefore a need to look at/review education, especially school education as a whole, not in terms of policy but in terms of the existing systems and practices.
The education policy as such under the NEP is but excellent, provided it’s implemented in TOTO and in right earnest, not in piece meal or as per political conveniences, which sadly is the tendency in India.
It is often that in this kind of situation, the political authority and the bureaucrats “ASS-UME” expertise and promulgate minuet procedures and methods. These rules and procedures become more “Ass” like and there is always “donkey” like blind or token following of such regulation and never achieving the projected or anticipated end results.
The fact is, these political authorities and the bureaucrats are not entrusted with the responsibility of educating the children, nor are they qualified or fit to carry out such tasks. The task of educating the children are entrusted to the school authorities and the teachers, therefore the minuet level planning and implementation should be left to them as they are aware of children’s abilities, capabilities and various limiting factors. The school authorities are conscious of their infrastructural and other limitations and their responsibilities towards the teachers, as their employees.
Therefore, it would always be wise for the regulatory authorities to lay down simple guidelines or just policies which enables the Institutions to carry out their task of educating the children in the best possible way in the context of limitations and restrictions imposed by the prevalence of the pandemic.
In terms of such guidelines the government needs to first think of drastically reducing the number of students that enter the campus on a given time of the day. Anything between 50% to 30% may look reasonable. This could be achieved by a system of syllabus bifurcation.
It is often that nearly 60% of the syllabus is often some carry forward from the previous years with enhanced information/knowledge out of the remaining 40% nearly 10%-20% is easy and often only 30% is categorised as difficult. A judicious division of the same for self-learning, virtual learning and assisted learning could certainly reduce the pressure on the school, on the teacher as well as, the taught. So that the syllabus and the learning can easily be divided into virtual and physical classes.
The other area could be staggered timings so that, at a time only 30% to 50% of the students, alone attend the physical classes. The other half studying at home during those timings with definite task assignment with timings, and cross verification systems etc.
There will also be need to staggered timings of students & the teachers entry and exit to the school campus for different classes, then it would be much easier to follows the COVID safety protocols.
With a system of combination of virtual and physical classes ensuring that neither the students nor the teachers are being subject to additional hours of work or teaching workload, the need for effective teaching and training could be fulfilled to a greater extend.
All said and done the Governments cannot and should not escape from its responsibility to provide better infrastructure and more number of qualified teachers in the field of education. The minimum requirement will be, doubling the infrastructure and doubling the number of teachers.
The government should enhance its expenditure on education. Though the NEP2020 requires a minimum 6% of the budget, governments should increase it to 10% of the budget, after all that is investments for the future. Buildings roads, or bridges are neither investment nor development as they continue to be a liability, with repairs and maintenance, this is all the more considering the poor quality of work and materials used due to corruption at all levels of such transactions.
Future of the nation is secured if quality education is provided for the children.
