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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | As the pandemic makes digital teaching the norm, these initiatives are bringing school to rural children -Mala Kumar

As the pandemic makes digital teaching the norm, these initiatives are bringing school to rural children -Mala Kumar

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published Published on Jul 23, 2021   modified Modified on Jul 25, 2021

-The Hindu

As children in rural India, with little access to gadgets and networks, are pushed into deeper marginalisation, a look at some initiatives that try to change this

Eleven-year-old Chaithanya has not been to school in over a year. On a Sunday morning, she is glued to the television in her house in rural Ravugodlu, Karnataka, watching an English lesson. With schools closed, many children like Chaithanya are making use of classes beamed on Doordarshan’s Kannada channel since the beginning of the month.

The pandemic has pushed an already neglected section of the population into deeper marginalisation — children in rural India, especially those in government schools.

And while edtech companies have been doing booming business with steeply priced programmes, they have hardly touched rural India. Data from the government’s Unified District Information System for Education Plus shows that only 22.3% of all schools had Internet facilities for students in 2019-20. According to the Department of State Educational Research and Training, 30% of students in Karnataka have been deprived of academic activities since the pandemic struck, and 39% of children have had no access to any gadget.

When schools closed in March 2020, children lost, among many other things, their mid-day meal (though equivalent rations continue to be sent home once a month), the development of social skills that they picked up when interacting with peers, and academic progress. According to a field study conducted by the Azim Premji Foundation in January 2021, which covered over 16,000 students in 1,137 government schools in five States, 82% of children on average lost at least one specific mathematical skill, and 92% of children lost a specific language skill.

“The longer children stay out of school, the more they forget, the less they know, and in the context of government schools, many students may simple choose to drop out altogether,” says Ashok Kamath, chairperson of the Akshara Foundation, a Bengaluru-based educational charitable trust.

But as online education becomes the buzzword, some platforms have become lifelines for many students in rural India. DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for School Education), for instance, is a free platform that offers open digital content of NCERT, CBSE, NIOS and all State and Union Territory boards. Likewise, a compilation of State-wise programmes conducted by the Ministry of Education to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on school education covers everything from ways to conduct online sessions to ensuring mental well-being during the pandemic, to lesson plans and teacher resources.

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The Hindu, 23 July, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/society/as-the-pandemic-makes-digital-teaching-the-norm-these-initiatives-are-bringing-school-to-rural-children/article35482315.ece?homepage=true


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