Many countries are suggesting various levels of containment in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. With these worries, schools and universities are closing down and moving abruptly to online platforms and remote education. This sudden change has us asking, “Is the education system in India on a verge of collapse?”

Context

Sometime in the second week of March, governments across the country began shutting down schools and colleges temporarily as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. It’s been almost four months. The debate over future of education has led to various concerns among students, parents, educational institutions as well as policymakers.

Social distance and Education

Schools, Colleges and various Institutes across the globe are simply instructed to limit the exposure of susceptible student population. This includes measure such as-

School closures
Postponing/rescheduling examinations
Cleaning and sanitization of premises
Consideration of long-term contingency

How Education has been impacted so far?

1) Delays

Standardized testing and school admissions are being delayed across the country.
Some states have opted to cancel or delay standardized testing, while others are thinking of extending the school year due to delays and many missed days of school.

2) Challenges for staff and students

Adaption issues: As school and university staff learn how to convert their lessons to online platforms, both students and staff are learning how to deal with remote learning and communication.
Overnight change: Though technology has already had a big hand in most school affairs, the new dependence on technology for every aspect of education is forced to occur overnight.

3) Learning impairments

Lack of concentration: Younger children, as well as specially-abled students, find it difficult to concentrate on full capacity with online educational tools.
Young children need the assistance of in-person instruction and may find it difficult to concentrate on a typical frontal class conducted on a computer.
Specially-abled ones: Students with special needs, who also rely on in-person instruction, may find it especially difficult to switch to online platforms.
These difficulties may require a more unique approach to online learning or may demand the extra assistance of parents as these students navigate a new educational paradigm.

4) Fear of dropouts and child labour

Disadvantaged, at-risk, or homeless children are more unlikely to return to school after the closures are ended, and the effect will often be a life-long disadvantage from lost opportunities.
A livelihood loss for low earning families has drawn severe triggers for dropouts and child labour as well.

5) Productivity and employment

The pandemic has significantly disrupted the higher education sector as well, which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future.
A large number of Indian students—second only to China—enroll in universities abroad, especially in countries worst affected by the pandemic, the US, UK, Australia and China.
Many such students have now been barred from leaving these countries. If the situation persists, in the long run, a decline in the demand for international higher education is expected.
Recent graduates in India fear the withdrawal of job offers from corporates because of the current situation.

6) Strain on the health-care system

Women make up almost 70% of the health care workforce, exposing them to a greater risk of infection.
They often cannot attend work because of childcare obligations that result from school closures.
This means that many medical professionals are not at the facilities where they are most needed during a health crisis.

Consequences: A setback beyond closures

Children have fewer opportunities of learning from home. Further, closure of schools is likely to lead to parents missing work, in order to stay at home and take care of the children.
This also affects productivity, incurs a loss in wages, consequently affecting the community and the economy as a whole.
Midday meals: Schools in India also have a social element attached to them. With closed schools, the health and nutrition of students will be affected, especially schedule caste and scheduled tribes.

Response to the Crisis

The Indian government has taken cognizance of the untapped potential of e-learning.

E-VIDYA: The one-nation-one platform facility through the PM E-Vidya platform and a dedicated channel for students from Class 1 to Class 12 will liberalize distance and online learning regulatory framework. Moreover, emphasis on community radio, podcasts, and customized content for differently-abled will enable more inclusivity into access to education.

Rise of MOOCS: The UGC has encouraged them to adopt massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered on its SWAYAM platform for credit transfers in the coming semesters.

Encouraging VidyaDaan: The Union HRD Ministry has e-launched VidyaDaan 2.0 program for inviting e-learning content contributions. ‘Vidya Daan’ is a digital program to enable contributions to improve teaching & learning.

Distant Learning has its limitations

In India, 320 million students have been affected by COVID-19 school closures. Needless to say, the pandemic has transformed the centuries-old, chalk–talk teaching model to one driven by technology. Online learning has become a critical lifeline for education, which has its inherent limitations.

1) Digital illiteracy and Lack of technology access

“Online teaching” ignores India’s immense digital divide—with embedded gender and class divides.

Digital illiteracy and lack of access to technology or fast, reliable internet access prevent students in rural areas and from disadvantaged families.
It is an obstacle to continued learning, especially for students from disadvantaged families.

2) Unequal access to educational resources

Lack of limitations and exceptions costly paid courses can also have an impact on the ability of students to access the textbooks and materials they need to study.
Several initiatives are now being taken by the government to grant that students and teachers can have access to open educational resources or understand copyright limitations.

3) Nutrition and food insecurity

Nutrition plays a critical role in cognitive development and academic performance for children.
Many children rely on free or discounted meals at schools or the food under the Midday Meal Scheme.
When schools close, nutrition is especially compromised for children.

4) Passive learning

India is a country where the backbone for online learning is not yet ready and the curriculum was never designed for such a format.
The sudden shift to online learning without any planning has created the risk of most of our students becoming passive learners and they seem to be losing interest due to low levels of attention span.
We are now beginning to realize that online learning could be dull as it is creating a new set of passive learners which can pose new challenges.

Lessons learned during the Lockdown

While lamentable, the disruption to education systems worldwide offers valuable lessons and provides a unique opportunity to reimagine education, the curriculum, and pedagogy.

The current system gives a disproportionate emphasis on information transfer and not the knowledge.

1) The digital divide needs to be bridged

Technology has the potential to achieve universal quality education and improve learning outcomes.
But in order to unleash its potential, the digital divide (and its embedded gender divide) must be addressed.
Digital capabilities, the required infrastructure, and connectivity must reach the remotest and poorest communities.
Access to technology and the internet is an urgent requirement in the information age. It should no longer be a luxury.

2) The curriculum needs a revamp

While teachers are struggling to learn digital ways of communicating with their students, it is clear that we need to pay close attention to what we teach.
This crisis is teaching us that curricula must be grounded in students’ realities, cultivating critical, creative, and flexible thinking, resilience, and empathy in students.
Developing a symbiotic relationship with our environment has taken on a new urgency, and teachers must help students think about their relationship with the universe and everyone and everything in it.
Now is the time for governments to integrate such a curriculum into the national curricular framework.

3) A wider cadre of teachers need to be created

This crisis is forcing teachers to reinvent their roles from that of transferring information to enabling learning.
The shift to distance learning has afforded many opportunities to teach differently, encouraging self-learning, providing opportunities to learn from diverse resources, and allowing customized learning for diverse needs through high-tech and low-tech sources.

4) Empowering the community with resources

Continuing education amid school closures has also taught us an important lesson about the role of the community in teaching our children.
Improving the education system requires a decentralized, democratic community-based approach, where community ownership of education is cultivated.
Important for this is the hiring of local teachers (with adequate Dalit and female representation), which increases teachers’ accountability to children’s families and their ability to empathize with students’ lives.

UNESCO recommendations

The UNESCO has made these recommendations for engaging in online learning:

Develop distance learning rules and monitor students’ learning process: Define the rules with parents and students on distance learning. Design formative questions, tests, or exercises to monitor closely students’ learning process.
Examine the readiness and choose the most relevant tools: Decide on the use of high-technology and low-technology solutions based on the reliability and availability of resources. This could range through integrated digital learning platforms, video lessons, MOOCs, to broadcasting through radios and TVs.
Ensure inclusion of the distance learning programmes: Implement measures to ensure that students including those with disabilities or from low-income backgrounds have access to distance learning programmes if only a limited number of them have access to digital devices.
Prioritize solutions to address psychosocial challenges before teaching: Create communities to ensure regular human interactions, enable social caring measures, and address possible psychosocial challenges that students may face when they are isolated.
Plan the study schedule of the distance learning programmes: Plan the schedule depending on the situation of the affected zones, level of studies, needs of students’ needs, and availability of parents.
Provide support to teachers and parents on the use of digital tools: Organise brief training or orientation sessions for teachers and parents as well, if monitoring and facilitation are needed.
Blend appropriate approaches and limit the number of applications and platforms: Blend tools or media that are available for most students, both for synchronous communication and lessons and for asynchronous learning.
Define the duration of distance learning units based on students’ self-regulation skills: Keep a coherent timing according to the level of the students’ self-regulation and abilities especially for live-streaming classes. Preferably, the unit for primary school students should not be more than 20 minutes, and no longer than 40 minutes for secondary school students.
Create communities and enhance connection: Create communities of teachers, parents, and school managers to address a sense of loneliness or helplessness, facilitate sharing of experience and discussion on coping strategies when facing learning difficulties.

Way Forward

A multi-pronged strategy is necessary to manage the crisis and build a resilient Indian education system in the long term.

Immediate measures like Open-source digital learning solutions and Learning Management Software should be adopted so teachers can conduct teaching online.

The DIKSHA platform, with reach across all states in India, can be further strengthened to ensure accessibility of learning to the students.

It is important to reconsider the current delivery and pedagogical methods in school and higher education by seamlessly integrating classroom learning with e-learning modes to build a unified learning system.

There is an information explosion in India. It is important to establish quality assurance mechanisms and quality benchmark for online learning developed and offered by India HEIs as well as e-learning platforms that are experiencing a boom.

Conclusion

Online classes are no substitutes for classroom lectures for a variety of reasons. The digital divide is one off the reason. Surely, it should be built as a complementary tool.