NEW DELHI: After two years of school and university closure, several Covid-19 waves in the national capital, full vaccination of over 70 per cent of the eligible population followed by declining Covid numbers and better health situation, there has been no word from the higher authorities on re-opening the educational institutes so far.
The city’s schoolteachers, university professors, parents, and students have strongly demanded that schools and colleges be opened, ahead of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) meeting scheduled on Friday.
Nandita Narain, president of the Democratic Teachers’ Front of Delhi University, said, “We can take precautions. We can start by calling students within Delhi, and those who are outside Delhi may have an option to access online classes. We need to have a strong internet package which will permit all of us to take online classes from the classrooms where half the class is sitting in front of us and the rest attend it online.”
She added: “By now, the university should have been able to prepare smart classrooms for all of us. I can assure you that the students’ education has been severely damaged already. In a college like St Stephen’s, it is unheard of not getting even 50 per cent of students for the online classes. Also, online means examinations are all bogus. Students are not learning a thing. The whole idea of education is finished.”
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The Delhi University students had held a long protest against the administration demanding the reopening of the campus. The teachers had also taken to social media to convey that online classes were of no use to the students as most of them did not log in.
Recently, the Protsahan Foundation had documented case studies from Delhi slums where children in the age group of 8-14 years have forgotten to write simple alphabets and are failing in the Grade 2 level ASER tests. Ninety per cent of the 8,00,000 parents of government schoolchildren and 68 per cent of the 33,000 who emailed Education Minister Manish Sisodia were in favour of the opening of schools.
As part of their survey, the foundation had highlighted: “Physical schools can’t be replaced with online education. Children who don’t have access to digital devices have either dropped out or are lagging behind in studies. They are missing out on access to daily mid-day meals, and many girls have gone back to using unsafe practices during menstruation.”
Mohammad Imran, a parent, said, “The studies for a Class 4 student have never been this monotonous. What is the point of forcing a child to sit in front of the laptop to attend a class when there is no physical activity or a healthy interaction between the teacher and the student? No extra-curricular activities and no outdoors. The kids have forgotten how to make friends.” Bharat Arora, president of Action Committee of Private Schools, (ACPS) said, “The schools should reopen full-fledged with SoPs in mind. It is high time as students haven’t seen the schools, and have been missing out on many things.”