Addressing India’s education crisis
One of the most moving and defining images of the current times is that of a girl bursting into tears after she returned to the classroom as schools reopened earlier this month in India. Covid has robbed close to two priceless years from young students, and this has hurt them not just from an academic point of view. At least 13 states have, so far, reopened schools while others are toying with the idea.
As the Covid third wave witnesses a sharp dip, the country is staring at one of its biggest challenges ever—the education crisis. According to the Department of School Education and Literacy, over 24 crore school children were impacted by the pandemic. Of them 12 crore are in Classes 1–5. All of them, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports in its August 2021 report notes, suffered instructional loss.
If one needs to understand the true nature of the problem, the ASER 2021 report provides a glimpse. It says that about one in every three children in Classes 1 and 2 has never attended in-person school before. “Entry to the world of formal education can be a difficult process at the best of times, but the challenges these young children face as learners are likely to be far more complex than would have been the case in pre-pandemic times,” it sums up. In addition to critical loss of learning, the absence of key social interactions that shape the well-being of children and their ultimate future is the most disturbing outcome of the crisis. The first thing that all states must do at once is reopen schools.
What is heartening though is that the Centre is seized of the matter and this is reflected in the spate of measures such as announcement of the expansion of One Class, One TV Channel, establishment of a Digital University and e-learning programmes in the Union Budget. Bridging the huge learning gap is the need of the hour. Here the states have a huge role to play because of the demographic divide, economic disparity and wide gender gap in education. There cannot be a one-size-fits-all strategy and the Centre must handhold them. Or else, it might well be impossible to compensate for the loss the country is looking at.