Online learning will have impact on students’ future, planning essential: Experts

At a zilla parishad school in Palghar, nearly 30% students have not been able to attend classes since the school moved online in March 2020

At a zilla parishad school in Palghar, nearly 30% students have not been able to attend classes since the school moved online in March 2020. Lack of access to technology, poor connectivity and the trauma induced by pandemic-related pressures such as job losses, has meant that many students have remained in schools only on paper.

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“While the pandemic has left no scope for physical classes, in an area like this, it is a distant dream to see all students online. We have taken all efforts to ensure that their learning doesn’t stop. We call them on their phones, make routine visits to their homes, distribute physical worksheets and a lot more. So, we can say that we are teaching. But how much the students are learning, we really need to assess,” said the principal of the school on the condition of anonymity.

As schools, colleges and universities in the state continue to remain online for over a year now, experts now worry about the future repercussions of this shift. While education boards and governments across the country cancelled exams, moved everything online and tried to tweak their teaching-learning process this year, many say that a more long-term solution is needed to plan for the coming years. Many suggest reworking the syllabus, slowing down the teaching-learning process to meet the needs of students and teachers, planning realistically for exams among other things.

Francis Joseph, a city-based educationist and the co-founder of SLN Global Network said education boards need to start planning for the next year or two from now as the pandemic has had a huge impact on learning over the last one year. “Boards, schools and everyone needs to realise that this year has been exceptional. Both students and schools had to face a lot of uncertainties and have managed to somewhat sail through. However, there is a learning loss that has been caused during this time. Hence, boards need to slow down a bit, assess what needs to be done to tweak the syllabus a little while working around the challenges with schools,” he added.

With rising cases and the resultant lockdown, the Maharashtra government had to cancel its Class 10 SSC exams this year. Other boards such as CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE and IB also took the same call. Experts said a similar decision might have to be taken again in the coming months and years because one cannot predict how the pandemic pans out later. “We need to prepare for the worst. This year, we only did firefighting. We cancelled exams, we moved schools online because it was the need of the hour. But now that we know this can be our state even in the coming years, we need to prepare ourselves better. Schools need to be taught to assess student performance throughout the year, colleges need to be equipped to move their theory and praxis based teaching online and make it more effective,” said Shubhada Mhatre, a civic body teacher in the city.

While educational institutes are coming up with the short term and long term plans to address for the coming year, lack of clarity from the governments is turning out to be a hurdle in the process. For instance, in Maharashtra, school and college closures are extended by a few months now and then. In the month of November 2020, when Covid-19 cases in the state had substantially reduced, institutes were asked to ready for a physical reopening. While some schools and junior colleges in Maharashtra could open, many others in cities such as Pune and Mumbai could not. Even the ones that opened in the various districts across the state had to close again as cases rose in April 2021.

Institutes said the government can now come up with a slightly longer strategy to indicate in advance whether learning will be online during the coming months. “A lot of investment is required to set up the infrastructure for online learning. During the first wave, we had all our basics in place with a smooth transition from offline to online. While we were planning to invest in more advanced technologies, however, institutes were asked to prepare for a physical reopening. And now we are back to our emphasis on the online mode. Even private institutes which are ready to invest will be able to plan better if the government comes up with a slightly longer plan,” said Hrridaysh Deshpande vice-chancellor DY Patil Group.

At this point, most prominent boards are yet to lay down a formal strategy to address concerns around learning losses in the coming months. While the Maharashtra state board did release a set of guidelines for mitigating learning losses in February 2021, the specific details about what schools need to do to assess learning outcomes are yet to be released. “Right now, teaching has sadly remained a formality. We don’t know if the children have learnt what is taught and fear a lot of challenges in the coming years,” said a teacher from a suburban school.