BENGALURU: The Primary and Secondary Education Department has issued detailed guidelines with various alternatives for admission process, online and offline classes and preparations for the 2021-22 academic year, which begins from July 1.
The guidelines include alternatives for action plans that are to be formulated from the school level to the district level in case schools have to hold classes virtually, for continuity in learning. School teachers have been asked to update the information about access to technology that each student’s family possesses. In case where a child has no parents, benevolent persons who are willing to provide education support to these students are to be identified.
Neighbours with television access must be identified for students who do not have access to phones or television, so they can attend the classes telecast on Doordarshan Chandana. Parents are to be roped in to get information about neighbours with smartphone access so students can download their classes. Classes will also be broadcast on the radio. Teachers are expected to convince parents about encouraging their children to attend the alternative classes.
Students are to be given specific dates to visit the school twice a week and collect practice sheets and a brief on how to work them out. These sheets will be used for evaluation that will help teachers fill the learning gaps. These worksheets will be used for comprehensive evaluation. A teacher will mentor 10-15 students. These assessment tools and physical classes twice a week are applicable for those students who have television at home too.
Those with just feature phones may use the radio for classes. Teachers will keep in constant touch with them over the phone to evaluate their learning. Those with smartphones, laptops and internet can use the department’s ‘Samveda’ videos that are telecast on Chandana channel and lectures on radio (which are broadcast for 30 mins for students of Classes 1 to 4), use the 22,000-plus content on Diksha app for Classes 1 to 10.
As many as 50 videos uploaded by teachers on YouTube channel ‘Makkala Sahayavani’ last year can be viewed. Teachers are encouraged to send short lecture videos to parents to be shown to their children, and stay in touch with the former over a Whatsapp group. Classes in Marathi and Urdu will also be uploaded on YouTube.
Students will have a bridge course of 30 days to revise the syllabus of the previous year and acquire necessary knowledge needed for the current year. Students will be given online and offline practice sheets to work out at the end of the bridge course. Schools have to prepare the timetables as they do every year, if physical classes start this year.
Teachers and head teachers will create timetables to ensure parents visit the teachers once a week to discuss the academic progress of their wards. Teachers ought to have a child profile as a database for evaluation of continuous learning of the student for all subjects, and upload it on the department’s Students Achievement Tracking System (SATS) portal.
Students to visit schools twice a week
Students are to be given specific dates to visit the school twice a week and collect practice sheets and a brief on how to work them out. These sheets will be used for evaluation that will help teachers fill the learning gaps, according to the guidlines.