Over 9 lakh govt school students in Delhi benefitted from digital learning during lockdown, says Manish Sisodia

“I am glad to see that we could minimise academic damage due to loss of learning time, thanks to the exemplary efforts of our teachers, parents and children who embraced this new way of learning,” Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia said.

The five digital learning interventions — that had been started by the Delhi government over the past two months to help children continue learning even during the lockdown — concluded on Sunday, with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia saying that more than nine lakh students of Delhi government schools had benefitted from the initiative.

On Sunday, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia conducted a review meeting with parents, teachers, and students in the presence of senior education department officials. (PTI file photo)

The five programmes initiated by the Delhi government included live online classes for students of class 12, English and personality development for Class 10 and 12 students, online mathematics for Class 9 students, digital entrepreneurship mindset classes for students of classes 9 to 12, text and interactive voice response (IVR) enabled activity classes for classes KG to 8 through parents. In addition to these, 15 sessions of happiness classes were also conducted online, which were open to all and were attended by families.

On Sunday, Sisodia conducted a review meeting with parents, teachers, and students in the presence of senior education department officials. “I am glad to see that we could minimise academic damage due to loss of learning time, thanks to the exemplary efforts of our teachers, parents and children who embraced this new way of learning,” he said. Director of Education Binay Bhushan said the department plans to track the students on a weekly basis, till they join schools completely.

Principal advisor to director education, Shailendra Sharma, said the online classes for Class 12 students were attended by over 1,40,000 students. Launched in partnership with Career Launcher on April 6, the maximum attendance recorded was for English classes with 60,500 students logging in. “Earlier in our regular classes, we did not have the option to go back to topics already covered, but now in online classes, these topics are recorded and can be watched over and over again,” said Diya Jain, a student of a government school in Gandhi Nagar during the review meeting with Sisodia.

Around 1,75,000 students of Class 9 accessed the Mathematics lessons, which were assisted by 1,015 teachers oriented by Khan Academy, the government said. The 90-minute class spread over three days a week for a month and covered seven topics on foundational maths for a new batch and 4 topics of practice for the old batch.

The government’s flagship entrepreneurship classes also continued during the lockdown and around 45,000 students participated in the digital activities. “Around 25 IVR based activities and 52 inputs to parents were shared with nearly 570,000 students. These activities ranged from building reading, writing and numeracy skills to self-reflection, critical thinking and responding to lockdown situation,” the government said in a statement.

During the 30 sessions of the English and personality development classes conducted by the Delhi government in partnership with British Council and MacMillian Education, maximum attendance stood at 83,545.