Empty classrooms

That Covid-19 has disrupted education in an unprecedented way is illustrated by the fact that schools reopened after a gap of six months on Monday to a lukewarm response. Attendance was mostly thin as regular classes are yet to resume and the students allowed initially have been limited to those appearing for the board exams, that too for ‘consultation’ or ‘guidance’. A major handicap to the resumption of classes is believed to be the opposition of parents who do not wish to put their young wards at risk. The schools, on their part, are not taking chances and have made mandatory the consent of guardians, besides putting in place the Covid protocol to rule out chances of the infection being contracted. The teachers had already been preparing lessons and modules for online classes and now there has been a fresh advice for them to get tested.

Schools will also have to contend with the prospect of utilising their infrastructure like transport used to ferry children and incurring expenditure on taking measures meant to make the institutions safer. As fresh guidelines from the government are awaited for the future course of action, an encouraging feature, as suggested by the initial reports, has been the enthusiasm among the students in schools located in the rural areas. Imparting education has always been a challenging task in the country and the pandemic has made it tougher. An abiding concern for the educationists has been to increase access through enrolment and by checking the school dropout rate, for which a scheme like the mid-day meal was launched. With offline classes getting restricted, how the crisis impacts all this remains to be seen. The switchover to online education has also come with its share of problems. Not every child has a smartphone and at many places, Internet connectivity is not adequate.

With colleges remaining shut and exam as well as admission schedules getting affected, education in the country appears to be in complete disarray. As the UN has emphasised, getting students safely back to the classroom must be a top priority as we confront a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential.