Spread of Covid impacted school education: Centre
New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday informed the Parliament that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted school education. In a reply to an unstarred question in the Upper House by Trinamool Congress member Jawhar Sircar, MoS education Annapurna Devi mentioned that schools in states and Union Territories (UTs) were closed as a precautionary measure to protect the students from Coronavirus. This has interrupted the learning of students from pre-school to grade 12.
Sircar asked government's overall estimate of the devastation caused by the COVID pandemic on school education since the first lockdown was imposed nation-wide, or whether government agrees that almost two full academic years have been affected most adversely and whether there is hope or plan to make up for the lost parts of the curriculum and teaching. The Minister of State (MoS) answered, "With a view of addressing the issues related to gaps or loss of learning among students, during and after the lockdown, NCERT has prepared 'Alternative Academic Calendar' which is a week-wise learning plan for grades 1 to 12. It further maps the topics or themes with the learning outcomes and facilitates teachers or parents to assess the progress in students' learning in a variety of ways."
"Also, links for e-resources have been provided for those learners who have access to the Internet. NCERT has also developed bridge course modules for out-of-school children including various activities which are helpful for bridging the learning gaps and the States/UTs have also been requested to prepare and implement School Readiness Module or Bridge Course in classrooms for initial one or two months for each grade," Annapurna Devi informed the Rajya Sabha.
Further, the MoS informed the House that the "National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat)" was launched by the education ministry on July 5, the last year, which lays down priorities and actionable agendas for states and UTs to achieve the goal of proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy for every child by grade. According to the government, majority of the schools are under the domain of respective state and UT governments. Listing out the education modules that have been taken up grade-wise, the MoS mentioned the 'Vidya Pravesh' module launched for class I students. This is a play-based three months school preparation programme for children entering class I.
In addition, a comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA was initiated which unifies all efforts related to digital or online or on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education; DIKSHA the nation's digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states or UTs and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform), one earmarked Swayam Prabha TV channel per class from I to XII (one class, one channel), and extensive use of radio, community radio and CBSE Podcast- Shiksha Vani, along with special e-content for visually and hearing impaired developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website or YouTube.
At the same time, in many parts or in remote villages students are unable to access internet-based education, in order to provide continuous professional development opportunities to the teachers at the elementary and secondary level, the education ministry launched the 'Nishitha' online training programme using 'Diksha' platform in October 2020.
Moreover, in the last month, the Centre also issued a comprehensive learning recovery plan (LRP) on February 1, to all states and UTs to provide a multi-pronged and holistic approach to ensure that children received suitable support, where various interventions including the Learning Enhancement Programme (LEP), Teacher Resource Package (TRP), Oral Reading Fluency Study (ORF), ICT facility to Block Resource Centres (BRCs) Strengthening of Clusters Resource Centres (CRCs) will be provided.
