RANCHI: In yet another move to reach out to the children living in remote villages of Jharkhand, the School Education and Literacy Department has now started conducting radio classes. The sessions will be held five days a week in the morning and evening via mediumwave and FM channels.
According to officials in the School Education and Literacy Department, initially, only 10-minute sessions will be taken which may be extended according to the response from the students.
Radio classes have been launched in Jamshedpur, Chaibasa on Monday and were gradually expanded to other districts like Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Daltonganj, Hazaribagh and Bhagalpur.
“Currently, it is being relayed from six radio stations, out of which five are in Jharkhand while one is at Bhagalpur in Bihar so that Santhal Pargana could also get covered properly. The first episode of the day us aired between 9 to 10 am while the second episode is aired in the evening between 5:30 – 6:30 pm. Different time-slots have been fixed for different stations,” said State Programme Officer (Quality Education) at Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC), Abhinav Kumar.
According to Kumar, the content basically is related to Hindi and English literature, History, Civics, Geography and some topics of science. Chapter-wise contents have been prepared by the school teachers in the form of stories of 8 to 9 minutes which is recorded here in Ranchi studios and aired on radio at a particular time,” said the Project Officer. Only such content has been taken up which are theoretical and could be described in the form of stories, he added.
“The first episode was aired on Monday which related to freedom fighter Birsa Munda. It was appreciated by students as well as the parents. As of now, the contents are being prepared in generalized form, which could be beneficial for every student right from Class 1 to 12. Gradually, class-specific contents will be developed once the students get habituated to this new form of study,” said Kumar.
An agreement of two months has been reached with the radio stations which will be extended further looking at responses from the students as well as their parents. The objective is to reach out to the maximum number of students during the pandemic and get them engaged with the process of learning.
Teachers also lauded this initiative as radio is said to be a strong mode of communication. They, however, doubted whether the students will get access to radio sets. As per the data available with the state government, over 65 per cent of students enrolled with government schools have no access to the online classes. An official said that only 33 per cent of 42 lakh students have been connected through WhatsApp for online classes in Jharkhand.