A Different Classroom

Context: There are academic strategies to be developed and modified to face current teaching-learning challenges.

Challenges in Post-pandemic Education of India: Highlights of ASER Report 2021

• Downturn in private school enrolment: It can be directly linked to economic troubles in the family. 
  • Discontinuities and disruptions make families curtail or postpone expenditures.
  • Low-cost private schools in rural areas have struggled to stay afloat.
• Use of grade-level curriculum may not be useful immediately: Making children deal with grade-level curriculum after almost a two-year gap or hurrying them through the syllabus are not appropriate responses.
• Access doesn’t automatically mean use: A little over 1/4th of all children with at least one smartphone can access the phone easily and another 1/4th is not able to access the phone at all.

Government initiatives during pandemic

• State governments have made concerted efforts to reach out to children with learning materials and rations instead of midday meals. 
• Direct cash transfers from schools to families have also increased in pandemic time. 

Way Forward: 

• Rural parents want their children to go back to school and children are eager and willing: For this, they will need help to settle in and reconnect.
• “Teaching at the right level” approach is the need of the hour. 
• NEP 2020 recommends that acquiring strong foundational skills needs to be the top priority. 
• Investing time and effort in rebuilding and strengthening children’s ability to read with understanding, improving their capacity to apply problem-solving skills and enabling them to help each other in the classroom may provide the big boost to the education system. 
• Assuming connectivity will increase and level the playing field: having device libraries at the school or village level may be one solution. Individuals and families can borrow devices on a priority basis. 
• Ground-level action will indicate which way our education system will go in the near future.

==========================================================================================