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Teacher-2-Teacher

Placing K-12 education back on

track

ELISABETH LEVI

NDIAN EDUCATION WAS SEVERELY DISRUPTED As the world begins to recover from
by the Covid-19 pandemic. While many children
missed school altogether during the world’s most the Covid-19 pandemic which severely
Iprolonged schools lockdown — averaging 82 weeks — disrupted K-12 schooling, the challenges
among major countries, partnerships between the public
and private sectors and incremental use of educational confronting India’s education system
technology permitted a minority of children to continue need to be urgently addressed
their schooling. As the world begins to recover in the
aftermath of this calamity, the challenges confronting
India’s education system need to be urgently addressed.
Making good learning loss of primary children. and rural populations that became glaringly evident
E-learning facilitated continuation of learning for a during the pandemic, is a prime cause for reigniting the
substantial number of children, especially in urban India. rusting cogs of the education machinery. Major factors
However, the positive effect was mostly for secondary contributing to this widening gap are unequal access to
school students. The overwhelming majority of preschool technology, lack of financial resources, and under-devel-
and primary (K-II) children have never attended school. oped rural areas. Millions of students in India who aren’t
These children need to be acclimatised to daily routines from privileged backgrounds don’t have access to digital
and expectations of the education system. Additionally, equipment and connectivity, ranging from availability of
they need to learn the basics of reading, writing and math, high-speed internet to smartphones. This disparity is de-
while learning age appropriate and grade level content. grading the quality and consistency of learning outcomes
Any strategy for moving forward must include plans for in government and budget private schools in particular.
remediation that also address progress in students’ cur- The Indian education system has often been castigated
rent grade learning outcomes. as regressive, slow, obsolete and memory-based. The Cen-
Reverse migration. Millions of people lost their jobs tral and state governments are making efforts to place the
during the pandemic. Low-income households were education sector back on track. It is investing in policies
hardest hit, prompting urban migrant labour and their and measures to augment the growth and reach of educa-
families to return to their villages. Many children had to tion countrywide. But the moribund system is sluggish
drop out of school due to the hardships and economic and slow to respond.
instability faced by their families, and many studying in gainst this backdrop, the most important priority is to
urban government schools had to enrol in rural schools Amodernise. Excellence centres, community sessions,
dispensing relatively low quality education. These reverse and e-learning programmes need to be started with focus
migrant students can help to raise teaching-learning stan- on accessibility for all. Students must be enabled to access
dards in rural schools. Simultaneously, governments of resources, information and support to turn education into
states such as Rajasthan and Jharkhand are improving in- a passport for getting meaningful and well-remunerated
frastructure and amenities and training teachers to make employment.
rural schools attractive to children. Plans for increased Simultaneously, there’s urgent need to educate and
enrolment need to take into account the unprecedented train teachers to access, comprehend and use educational
technology effectively. E-learning must continue paral-
reverse migration to rural India, and develop the educa-
tion sector as a whole. lely with in-class education to help students and the
education system attain global standards. Moreover, the
Drop-out teachers. Teachers are fundamental to
education. But India’s education system has largely failed ambit of The Right to Education Act, 2009, needs to be
extended to include children below age six and above 14
teachers. During the long months of the pandemic, a ma-
jority of teachers in affordable budget private schools and years of age.
Adoption of these measures will raise teaching-learn-
many government schools were laid off or not paid fully
and in time, prompting a large number of qualified teach- ing standards across the spectrum from pre-primary to
higher secondary, and better prepare students for higher
ers to drop out of the education system to work in tech
companies that mushroomed to provide online learning education and career opportunities. Government, parents
and educators need to collaboratively devise new strate-
during the pandemic. Continuous employment uncertain-
ty for teachers, lack of a proper support system and the gies to resolve the long-standing problems and challenges
confronting Indian education.
reluctance to confront these challenges will continue to
force teachers to drop out of the system. These on-ground
realities must be addressed to improve K-12 education. (Dr. Elisabeth Levi is vice president of linguistics, assessment and re-
Digital divide. The clear digital divide between urban search at the Jerusalem-based speaknow)
340 EDUCATIONWORLD SEPTEMBER 2022