Crisis As Teacher

Context: The aggravation of education crisis in India due to pandemic warrants for taking some urgent steps to solve the gaping education crisis.

Education crisis in India

• Lack of good quality education: According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 Report, 75 % of kids in Class 3 don’t have basic reading and arithmetic skills.
• Impact of the pandemic:
  • No access to any form of education: Many students, for over 12 months due to problems like lack of smart devices and access to the internet.
  • Adverse implications on learning outcomes: Many students will probably forget what they already knew due to missing an entire year of schooling.
  • Possibilities of reluctance to send back kids to school: Due to their families (especially in rural India) have gotten used to having the extra hands at home.

Short-term measures:

• Focus on reopening schools: Take creative steps to restart schools. e.g.  Use outdoor locations, teach in smaller groups in local community centres etc.
• Provide additional teaching support: By including parents, volunteers and older children in the community to support the traditional teacher and create continuity in the learning process. This can be achieved through the following steps-
  • Giving autonomy to school authorities.
  • Creating decentralised community-based solutions.
• Focus on using new touchpoints for education: Like accessing and creating free standardised content that can be easily disseminated through existing widespread mediums like television, radio and telephone along with creating new standardised assessments to ensure that continued learning.

Long-term measures:

• Digitalise education: Steps to be taken for reaping benefits of digitisation -
  • Bridge the “infrastructure divide” and create access.
  • Focus on building English literacy: Since 90 % of the content on the internet is in English.
• Create a hybrid education model:  that combines the best online learning tools with well-trained face-to-face teachers.

Conclusion: As Viktor Frankl said, “between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Through our response, let’s define the Indian education story differently.