9 lakh Delhi students attended online classes in lockdown

 New Delhi, May 31

Around nine lakh students between KG and Class XII from the Delhi government schools have benefited from the online and SMS/IVR supported learning during the lockdown, Education Minister Manish Sisodia said on Sunday.

The Minister reviewed the online and SMS/IVR supported learning for Delhi government school students along with his team. Sisodia said five different interventions for children across different grades between KG to Class XII were running during the lockdown.

"These interventions impacted nearly nine lakh children of Delhi government schools," he said Soon after the lockdown was announced, the Delhi government introduced digital learning for children across different grades.

He said it was challenging, at first, to conduct online classes with the help of digital technologies in these extraordinary times. "We had never used such technologies at this scale before." Along with Sisodia, Director of Education Binay Bhushan, Education Advisor Shailendra Sharma and Additional Director (School) Saroj Sain were also there in the review meeting, which was streamed online.

Bhushan said the Department is planning to track the students on a weekly basis from now onwards till they are back in school.

Sharma, on the other hand, explained about five programmes -- Live online classes for Class XI students; Everyday English and personality development for classes X and XII students; Online maths classes for class IX students; Digital Entrepreneurship Mindset classes for students of IX to XII; and SMS/IVR enabled activity classes for KG to VIII through parents.

Apart from these programmes for children, 15 sessions of "Online Happiness class for family" were also organised during the same period, viewed on an average by 40,000 people every day, Sharma said.

The live Online Classes for students of Class XI was launched on April 6 in partnership with the Career Launcher and 85 per cent students registered for the class.

"The maximum attendance recorded was for English class with 60,500 students logging in, as per the data recorded by the DoE. These classes concluded on May 30," Sharma said.

In the everyday English and personality development classes for the students of Class X and XII, the maximum attendance recorded on any particular day was 83,545.

"These classes were launched on May 4 by the government in partnership with British Council and MacMillian Education to provide an opportunity to acquire new skills for the students waiting to complete their board exams. The cycle of 30 sessions will conclude on June 2," Sharma said.

In the online Maths classes in collaboration with Khan Academy, around 1.75 lakh students of Class IX accessed the Maths lessons assisted by 1,015 teachers who were oriented by Khan Academy to guide the students of their respective schools.

"The online maths classes were launched on April 27 and concluded on May 29." In the Digital Entrepreneurship Mindset class for students of class IX to XII, around 45,000 students participated in 10 activities on 5 themes — creativity, self awareness, managing fear, dream big and decision making.

"Launched on April 2 and concluded on May 31, 25 IVR based activities each for Mission Buniyaad and Happiness and 52 inputs to parents shared with nearly 5.7 lakh students. These activities ranged from building reading, writing and numeracy skills to self reflection, critical thinking and responding to lockdown situations." — IANS