Taking a queue from the private schools, the central government for the first time has formally issued an order for online classes from 1st September in all the state-run schools. It also instructed that all teachers attend schools regularly from 27th August onwards and prepare e-content, lessons, etc for the current academic year.
With regard to the reopening of schools and commencement of regular classes physically, the GO said, separate instructions will be issued as per the government of India guidelines. Until then all the schools shall remain physically closed for the students, the GO said.
However, the academicians are expressing severe concern over the commencement of online mode of education saying “This way of imparting education will not achieve the goal and in fact put a catastrophic impact on the health of the large section of students especially those who are pursuing studies in a rural and remote area where no proper facilities like internet and etc are available.
“The success rate of online mode of education will be only 60 percent in private schools while it will be around 20 percent when it comes to government schools as over 65% of students are from rural and remote areas of the country. This mode only benefits students’ mainly from cities where sufficient technical mechanism is available to check the internet and broadband-related issues. Already, we are facing network-related issues during a conversation on mobile phones these days. Complaints are starting pouring in from various quarters that students are facing difficulties in getting lessons online due to various technical issues and in some cases lack of knowledge to handle the phones during online classes. How can a student, not aware of handling the gadget go for online classes without any issue?” asked, Yadagiri Shekar Rao, President Telangana Recognised Schools Management Association (TRSMA).
Only in the wake of government provide all the necessary support and infrastructure, he said, the students of both the sectors such as rural and urban could be able to benefit with the online mode of education and I am sure it is not at all possible,”
With regard to the reopening of schools with physical attendance of students, private schools especially are having more apprehensions than their counterparts in the government domain.
Disappointed with the state and central governments’ attitude towards distressed budget schools, the management of these institutions are now saying that they are not in a position to reopen the schools even insisted by the respective governments.
“Through all these difficult times, the governments have turned a blind eye towards our issues and problems created out of COVID-19 lockdown. Centre even issued an advisory recently saying managements shall take care of all the things before reopening the schools and ensure the safety of students. How the management of budget schools could bear the burden of arrangements while they have suffered a huge loss due to COVID-19 lockdown,” asked Mohammed Akhter Shareef, President Telangana Private Schools Forum (TPSF).
Post lockdown situation, he said, brought more misery to private institutions as neither the parents are paying arrears nor we are in a positing to pay the rents of accommodations or EMIs of loan we have taken from the banks to arrange infrastructure in schools. “Now the parents are even apprehensive of sending their children to school fearing their wards may get infected with the contagion,” he explains.
“Let alone coming to bail out the budget schools with incentives, the government even refrained from motivating the managements all these days. They are more inclined to come up with a bailout plan for distress industries but have left us in despair,” bemoaned Akhter.
“We are presently stuck in a position where we cannot able to welcome the advisory of the centre nor can oppose it given the present state of financial affairs and pressure mounting on us from the staff especially from teachers who became jobless due to present crisis,” he asserted.
Not opening the schools, he added, would turn the teachers bereft of whatever the wherewithal they have left to run their families and abiding the governments’ instruction will put an additional burden of arrangement on the school managements. “Coronavirus lockdown has brought us on a staggered junction where we can’t able to decide to which way we have to move on,” explained Mohammed Akhter Shareef.
