Impact on Education

The education sector is facing unprecedented challenges and needs to adapt and find solutions to keep children motivated and in their route to learning. How will the education sector and educators deal to overcome these challenges? How will children continue to learn, even as school, by necessity, becomes a digital space?

Inequality among children brought into sharp focus

School-going children are, naturally, the worst affected education sector stakeholders. For pupils, the lockdown doesn’t just mean reduced cashflow or a professional setback: it represents an interruption to their learning journey. And in the case of dropouts, it was the final straw for at-risk children who struggled to get an education at the best of times.

The lockdown has aggravated deep-set class and social differences, especially between private and public school systems. The Indian government spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on education. This is lower than in sub-Saharan countries like Kenya, Togo, and Zimbabwe.

This implies that access to food, much less access to education is a key driving force behind school enrolment. These students almost certainly do not have access to remote and digital learning facilities at home.

What this means is that, for millions of Indian students, the lockdown has brought all education to a complete halt.

Because access to midday meals is the primary reason so many Indian students attend school, if the lockdown continues for much longer, there is a chance that India’s dropout rate-which is already among the world’s highest-might increase further.

On the other hand, a minority of students attending urban private schools are seeing their education continue through standard digital platforms.

Children below the age of 8 years need parent support just to do the basics, even then their learning experience is below par. With schools already online for a few weeks now, there is enough data to suggest online school can help children of all age groups but is not an alternative to the brick and motor schools.

Lack of readiness and infrastructure for teachers

Teachers across the country are scrambling to find ways to continue teaching their pupils in a situation where physical contact is no longer possible. Again, class and social divides play a big role in determining how successful teachers are in teaching schoolchildren during the pandemic.

Teachers at the country’s premier private schools are tech-savvy: most have access to the internet at home, as well as the other digital infrastructure required to craft and share course material.