40% primary school students in Kolkata could not access classes during pandemic: study

About 40% primary school students could not attend on-line classes during the COVID-19 pandemic owing to the digital divide, a report revealed by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi (India) Trust discovered. The study was compiled on the premise of experiences shared by a whole bunch of lecturers throughout 21 State-run primary colleges in Kolkata.

The 72-page report highlights the problems confronted by students in accessing digital instructing studying.

“There are two components to the digital divide — one is affordability, and whether the families of students can afford devices that are required for digital learning. The second issue is regular accessibility of uninterrupted data, which again has an element of expenditure,” Sabir Ahamed, nationwide analysis coordinator, Pratichi (India) Trust, and one of many authors of the report mentioned.

The findings are based mostly on experiences over six months during the primary wave of the pandemic (April to November 2020) shared by primary school lecturers. The study highlights the large affect on the teaching-learning course of, which underwent a sea change after the pandemic.

“So long, the focus was on enrolling as many students as possible and reducing the number of missing children, but the pandemic has brought a situation where the school has gone missing,” the report.

The different contributors to the report embody Manabi Majumdar, Urba Chaudhuri, Kakali Das De and Sutapa Ghosh, amongst others.

According to the lecturers, the gaps in studying have widened and are various as a result of a number of components, together with the training and revenue of oldsters. “For students attending State-run schools, institutional learning was the primary focus. However, the pandemic forced children to depend on their parents for learning support. Since many children are first generation learners, the impact on learning for primary school students was more severe,” Mr. Ahamed mentioned.

The report targeted on youngsters enrolled in Classes 1 to five. While colleges continued to supply dry rations repeatedly as a complement to cooked mid-day meals, lecturers have reported dietary deficiency. Though extra households of school students sought dry rations, the researchers really feel that the rations have been distributed amongst members of the family, and in some instances, the kid’s dietary wants have been not met.

Also, during the interval surveyed, Kolkata witnessed one of many worst cyclones of the previous few a long time when Amphan battered south Bengal on May 20, 2020. For greater than a few weeks, the whole teaching-learning course of got here to a whole halt as a result of lack of digital connectivity.

The report has delivered to the fore sure optimistic outcomes, too, together with an increase in environmental consciousness amongst youngsters. While utilizing digital platforms to show students, lecturers additionally used revolutionary examples such because the counting of timber and flowers in the students’ environment.

“The report provides us with an understanding of how students are left in the digital teaching learning process. If 40% could not access digital classes in Kolkata, one can imagine the situation in remote areas of the State,” Mr. Ahamed mentioned.