Schools should have been the last to close and the first to re-open. But it has been the exact opposite in India with schools shut down before others and re-opened for higher classes the last. The schools have remained closed for the past 17 months and the survey paints a grim picture of the ‘calamity’.The survey conducted among disadvantaged sections in both urban and rural areas discovered that only nine percent of the students had their own smartphones. In most households with smartphones, they were used by working adults. Poor connectivity and having no money to pay for data ( recharge) were some of the other bottlenecks. Most schools in rural areas were not sending online course material. In the urban areas some parents received videos and test papers on WhatsApp but could make little sense of them. Most such efforts seemed designed to claim that online education was being imparted.The closure of schools not only deprived the children of education but also of a safe environment, a healthy social life and good nutrition, the report points out. Both reading and writing ability of the children had declined, the survey found, with very few second or third graders able to read a simple sentence in Hindi like ‘Jab se Corona mahamari faili hai, school bund hai’. Even in higher classes, almost half the students were unable to read the sentence correctly.
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