Govt schools step up efforts to bring kids back to class

In seven days, Arya, a 47-year-old physical education teacher at Rajkiya Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in Kiran Vihar, traced around 100 such students who do not have smartphones or Internet facility at home and could not be reached out by any means.

Armed with a microphone and a loudspeaker, Ajay Arya, a Delhi government school teacher has been visiting colonies and slum clusters in parts of north east Delhi since last week, looking for students who are not in touch with their schools ever since the physical classes suspended in view of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ajay Arya, a Delhi government school teacher, has been visiting colonies and slum clusters in parts of north-east Delhi looking for students who are not in touch with their schools.(HT photo)

In seven days, Arya, a 47-year-old physical education teacher at Rajkiya Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in Kiran Vihar, traced around 100 such students who do not have smartphones or Internet facility at home and could not be reached out by any means.

“Are there any students enrolled in government schools who neither attend online classes nor collect assignment sheets from schools that live here? I have a list of students who are not reachable on phone. Please help me locate them,” announces Arya on the microphone. After locating the address of a student, he counsels him/her and his/her parents about ongoing virtual learning in schools.

Schools across Delhi have resorted to conducting online classes, sending links to study material via WhatsApp and emails and SMS after the Covid-19 pandemic, and an ensuing lockdown, forced them to physically shut down.

The links are sent by the schools to the mobile phones of the parents of the students.

Due to the existing digital divide, government and civic bodies run schools have also started giving hard copies of assignment sheets to students, who do not have digital devices.However, despite all efforts, many schools said that some students could not be reached out via phone calls, SMS and WhatsApp messages.

From making door-to-door visits to find such students, to sending letters and assignments to their postal addresses, government schools in the national capital are making extra efforts to reach out to such students .

For instance, Harpreet Kaur, principal of Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya (SKV) in Tilak Nagar said that her school had formed area-wise teams of support staff and School Management Committee (SMC) members to search for students missing online classes.

“Within a week of starting the drive (started last week) we managed to trace 50% of the 112 students who were completely out of contact. Our teachers took extra efforts and joined WhatApp groups of the feeder MCD schools of Class 6 students to connect with them,” she said.

AK Jha, head of school at Sarvodaya Co-ed Vidyalaya in Rohini, said his school has sent out letters to the postal address of students, who remained incommunicado. “We have managed to get in contact with 94% of our students ever since the online learning resumed after the summer break in July. We made several efforts such as sending staff members to their postal addresses and also sent letters to their permanent addresses in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan as well. Despite all efforts, around 100 class 6 students are still out of contact,” he said.

According to the principals, a majority of students who cannot be reached out are those who have shifted from MCD schools to Delhi government schools in class 6. “Either their phone numbers were not working or had changed. Around 30% of such students are yet to be traced ” said principal of government senior secondary school in Patel Nagar.

Every year, around 1,00,000 students move from civic bodies run schools to Delhi government schools in class 6. MCD schools in Delhi offer education till class 5. Due to the prevailing pandemic this year, the induction of such students (around one lakh) happened online on the basis of names sent by municipal schools. The students and their parents could not visit the schools personally for the admission process unlike previous years.

A senior official in Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia’s office, who wished not to be named, said, “Our teachers are making extra efforts to trace students. Overall 20-30% Class 6 students who have been shifted from MCD schools are still out of contact. Overall hardly 5-10% students will be there who are still not in touch.”

Among those students who could not get in touch with their schools were the twins of a daily wage labourer Sukhdev Singh from north east Delhi’s Karawal Nagar. Singh said that he had lost his phone in February and could not afford to buy a new one after that. “I have been out of work since March and that’s why I could not buy a phone. We had left for our village in Bihar when the lockdown was announced in March. We returned earlier this month. I only got to know that my sons were transferred to Delhi government school after completing Class 5 from an MCD school after some teachers of their new school visited our home last week. We have now collected their books from the school,” he said.