SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

The Covid-induced lockdown ravaged the education system with schools closing down and online learning nowhere near effective

- KAUSHIK DEKA

Shubham Gupta is a first-year student of BCom (Honours) in Delhi’s Hansraj College. Yet the 18-year-old hasn’t set foot on campus even once since he took admission in September. He has taken a virtual tour of the college and has been taking lessons through his mobile phone and iPad. And Shubham isn’t alone in this. That’s how the batch of 2020—the Covid-19 generation—has been experiencing institutional education in a world disrupted by an unprecedented pandemic. Because of this, 47 per cent students have decided against migrating to another city for higher education, revealed a study titled the ‘Big Qs Student Survey’. Fifty per cent respondents have also abandoned plans to pursue higher education abroad.

Over 2,000 kilometres away from the national capital, in Assam’s Barpeta district, Nibha Choudhury, a 41-year-old teacher in the government-aided Finguagarh High School, had an extended holiday between the last week of March—when the country went into the national lockdown—and September. The school authorities tried to conduct online classes, but less than five per cent of the students had reliable and consistent internet access. “We sent out lessons and homework to the handful of students who had smartphones and internet connections. They helped some other students, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a substitute for classroom teaching,” says Choudhury. In the past two months, she has been slogging extra hours to compensate for the classroom hours her students lost during the lockdown. It’s not easy to impart education in segregated classes where the prime focus remains maintaining Covid protocols.

DO THE MATH

› Over 1.5 million schools across India closed down due to the pandemic