Why COVID-19 has severely impacted school education in India
By Jandhyala B.G. Tilak*. December 9, 2021
As is known, the health impact of COVID-19 in India has been devastating, with official figures of nearly 475,000 deaths and 35 million infections so far. The pandemic has also caused severe damage, both short-and long-term, to students in schools, especially more so in the government schools in the country. The government schools serve more than two-thirds of school students in India.
Following the lockdown, which began in March 2020, 1.5 million schools were closed for more than a year, impacting an estimated 247 million children across the country.
After a few months of suspending physical classes, schools that, had the technical capabilities, began offering online classes via Zoom and other video conferencing platforms. Students could also get their homework assignments via WhatsApp messages or email. The schools also used the traditional platforms for distance education, namely radio, television and postal mail, but on a very limited scale.
Data from several preliminary studies show that the school closures and subsequent switch to online learning led to sharp declines in the level of literacy and learning abilities. This was in part due to a lack of electricity, internet access, and devices that can connect to the internet as well as an absence of technical skills.
More than a third of the schools have no electricity. Further, only about half the households receive more than 12 hours of electricity a day. Even in schools and homes which have electricity, there is no guarantee that students and teachers can access the internet during school hours, due to frequent power failures.
Then, even with electric power, only about a tenth of government schools have access to the internet. There is wide disparity among states: for instance, only 7% of schools in Odisha have internet links, 9% in Bihar and 14% in Uttar Pradesh while in Delhi it is 86% and in Kerala 88%. Furthermore, less than one third of the schools have functional computers.
The teachers, working from home, faced several constraints. Many did not have computers, laptops or advanced smartphones, besides sufficient skills to conduct classes online. The situation was worse in some states: for instance two-thirds of the teachers in Chattisgarh and four-fifths in Uttar Pradesh do not have the necessary digital devices.
Furthermore, many teachers have limited knowledge about using online teaching platforms and dealing with security issues. Then, having to deal with 30-40 students in their virtual classes, they were unable to track if and when a student got disconnected from the internet feed.
The problems are much worse for the students. Only one out of six rural households and 42% of urban households have an internet connection. While a household may have access to an internet connection, only one out of 25 households in rural India and one out of four in urban areas have a digital device that is capable of accessing online education: a computer, laptop, tablet or a smartphone. The situation is worse in some states: only about 1 in one-hundred households have an internet ready device in the rural regions of Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh.
Having a smartphone in a household does not mean that a student can use it to access online learning. The phone may be a cheap one with limited data transmission and reception capabilities. Or the family can only afford to pay for a mobile service plan that offers limited amounts of data usage each month.
Then, assuming the device and data plans are adequate, a student may be unable to use the smartphone during school hours. It may be the only digital device in a household, shared among parents and other siblings, who may also be in school and have online classes at the same time. The same set of circumstances apply when more than one family member needs to use web-accessing hardware simultaneously.
Even if a student has access to a smartphone, has good eyesight and the ability to concentrate, and the teachers prepare useful online courses, the students are unlikely to learn much by staring at a small, roughly 2x4 inch screen, for hours each school day.
The onlline learning system transfers substantial responsibilities of educating a child from teachers and schools to parents. Many students studying online require guidance and supervision by their parents or others at home. One study found that nearly a third of students have no one to offer help at home. This may be because the parents are illiterate, computer and web illiterate, or they may be working and do not have the time.
In terms of assessing student performance, year-end examinations were either postponed repeatedly or cancelled; in some cases, they were replaced by internal assessments, which were not conducted systematically at regular intervals.
Many students at government schools were likely hungry during the day since a third of them did not receive their free midday meal, which they normally got when school was open.
Today schools are back to operating live in India. But the closure of schools, combined with the massive loss of jobs and income triggered by the pandemic, has caused major, long-term damage to millions of students. The learning loss seems to be huge.
Many students from poor and lower-income families are unlikely to resume school. Boys were forced to find work to support their families. For instance, since the lockdown began in March 2020, the number of child laborers has more than doubled in the state of Tamil Nadu. In the case of girls, there has been a sharp rise in early marriages and early pregnancies.
On the whole, the damage appears to be irrecoverable, unless meaningful initiatives are taken immediately and timely effective interventions are made.
*Jandhyala.B.G.Tilak is former Vice Chancellor, National University of Educational Planning & Administration; currently Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi, India. This article is based on the author’s paper published in Social Change.
