Page 38 - EW August 2021

Cover Story

30

EDULEADERS WEATHERING

COVID TSUNAMI

The world’s longest lockdown of schools is likely to prove
disastrous for the learning outcomes of over 100 million
children. However the silver lining of the grim pandemic
storm is that a small minority of education leaders have
succeeded in devising creative responses

Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen

T HE ORDER OF THE BJP/NDA govern- joining the workforce, being forced into early marriages,

ment at the Centre formalised on
falling prey to child traffickers and prostitution.
In the rarefied environs of Lutyens’ Delhi where the Cen-
March 25, 2020 directing closure of
tral government is floundering in a sea of troubles, and after
campuses of all education institu-
tions from preschools to university
two years of masterly inactivity under Hindi pulp fiction
for over 15 months and counting, to
sacked in the Union cabinet reshuffle of July 7, and new
prevent transmission of the deadly
education minister Dharmendra Pradhan is finding his
novel Coronavirus which has taken writer Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, who was belatedly
a toll of 4 million lives worldwide and 400,000 in India, bearings, there seems little concern that over 66 percent of
has severely disrupted Indian education and inflicted as yet India’s 260 million school children have not received any
uncalculated damage to teaching-learning across the edu- meaningful education for 16 months. Ditto in the educa-
cation continuum. Although all countries around the world tion ministries of the country’s 28 state governments and
except Sweden also shuttered their education institutions nine Union territories (education is a concurrent subject of
to safeguard children from being infected by this highly the Constitution) where the major preoccupation of edu-
contagious virus, it is pertinent to note that the duration cation ministries seems to be slashing private school fees
of India’s lockdown of 57 weeks is the longest worldwide, to placate the subsidies-addicted middle class and driving
except for neighbouring Myanmar and Nepal. Reputed or- private schools struggling to provide online classes, into
ganisations such as Unesco and Unicef among others are bankruptcy.
issuing alarming reports of millions of children in India, In Shastri Bhavan (which houses the Union education
deprived of Internet connectivity and digital learning de- ministry) and state governments, the assumption seems to
vices, dropping out of schools and colleges and prematurely be that by acts of God and through one-way lectures deliv-

38 EDUCATIONWORLD AUGUST 2021