School Reopening- Part 1

 [First in a three part series on school reopening. This examines why reopening may not be a good idea, and how we could have done better last year. ]

“Should schools reopen?”, is no longer a question up for debate. Schools have already reopened partially or fully in many states, and others are in the process of doing so too. Some states have given schools the flexibility to continue with a hybrid model, others have reopened only for high school students, but the reality is that unless there is a sudden spike in number of infections and/ or hospitalizations, by the end of the year every parent with children of school going age will soon have to decide whether or not to send their children to school.

One could question why we are in such a hurry to open up. Unlike this time last year, we now know that children below the age of 17 are also likely to get infected, and the symptoms can be severe enough to require hospitalization. It is no longer just a case of children being carriers of the virus and infecting grandparents and older relatives- we have seen how the capacity of pediatric ICUs have been stretched to the maximum and of how children have died of the virus. What then is the scientific basis for re-opening of schools, especially since none of our school children are vaccinated? There is none.

Unfortunately, it is not science that is driving the decision to reopen schools; the haste is entirely on account of sociological, developmental and economic factors. School closure and shifting to the online model has effectively blocked off access to education for millions of children of school going age. Studies have revealed that there has been a drop in learning levels among children on the wrong side of the digital divide. Most of these children have been pressed into child labour, and many have fallen victim to child marriage. There is a real danger of losing an entire generation of learners, which is why many are pushing the government for a reopening of schools. Medical doctors, who should be giving advice from a scientific/ medical perspective have, unfortunately, fallen for the rhetoric; they cite “our students cannot afford to lose another academic year” as the reason to reopen schools.

While there is certainly merit in the argument that students have already lost too much learning, and that further delays could potentially be irreversible, what most people are ignoring is the fact that reopening schools without putting proper procedures in place will only put millions of children (and unvaccinated members of their family) at risk.

Ideally, the issue of loss of learning should have been taken up and addressed last year. When India went into Lockdown, the service sector immediately moved to the online mode, and a few weeks later, private schools followed suit. While there were a few examples of the TV being used to reach out to students enrolled in government schools, for the most part, any teaching that was done was done online, using the Internet. Very few families had digital devices suitable for online classes, fewer still had reliable internet, and even those families which had both needed to prioritise which of their children would have access to the device.

Knowing that the vast majority of students would fall on the wrong side of the digital divide, an attempt should have been made to use other means of reaching out to students. Radio or TV have much better penetration than mobile phones, and either could have been used to reach out a much larger number of students.

More importantly, instead of merely reducing the curriculum, the Boards should have taken the decision to focus on reinforcing verbal and numerical skills. Given the fact that a majority of students do not have age/ grade specific verbal and numerical skills, this learning gap could have been bridged using a combination of self-study workbooks and on-on-one assistance from community level volunteers. Subject specific concepts could have been taught using either TV or radio. Students with age appropriate learning levels could have been taught concepts using a combination of self-study and TV or radio programs. Had this strategy been adopted, the pandemic would have proved a blessing by enabling India to address and bridge the challenge of the steadily increasing learning gap.

Unfortunately, all we did during the previous academic year was to shift what would have been taught in the physical classroom to a digital classroom. And today, we are left with a generation of students who have been promoted two grades, without attending a single class in over 18 months. The learning gap, which already existed, has now become wider, and it remains to be seen if and how teachers and students will be able to bridge it.

This, probably will be the greatest challenge to the education system.