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Primary school children in Chikhaldara, Maharashtra: loss of learning prospect
says Rai. of focusing on the complex challenge of providing engaging
Even as India’s faltering public education system is severely remote/online learning to children and charting safe school
hit by the pandemic, efforts of the managements of private reopening strategies.
schools, which educate 47 percent of the country’s school- Against this backdrop, it’s not an under-statement that
going children, to provide remote/online learning have been India’s K-12 education system is confronted with its worst-
hobbled by a plethora of ill-considered government circulars ever crisis. With schools shuttered for over five months at the
and notifications on fees and online education. Discerning an start of the new academic year and little prospect of opening
opportunity to win the grace and favour of the country’s influ- before September/October, school leaders are facing the for-
ential 300 million-strong middle class which overwhelmingly midable challenge of substantially covering the prescribed
choose private schools for their children, most state govern- syllabus and saving the academic year. The switch to digital
ments have issued official notifications directing private school online learning has necessitated intensive teacher training and
managements to defer and/or waive tuition fees for the March- capital expenditure at a time when private school parents are
July period and/or make other concessions. Simultaneously, demanding fee waivers and government has sidelined educa-
all state governments have directed school managements to tion. When schools reopen later this year, teaching-learning
continue payment of salaries to teachers and staff. pedagogies, processes and indeed objectives, may have trans-
Moreover, well-aware that continuously under-funded formed forever.
public (i.e, government) primary-secondaries will be unable As we go to press, the Union human resource development
to provide online classes or instruction, the majority of state — now renamed the education ministry — finally presented
governments has clamped down on online education in private the long-awaited National Education Policy 2020 on July 29.
schools on the excuse that excessive “screen time” is harmful It proposes major academic reforms in school education and
for children. For instance, the state government of Madhya new regulatory structures with wide-ranging implications for
Pradesh has banned online classes for all preschool-class V the future of Indian education (see cover story p.40).
children. In the pages following, we present recommendations of
Consequently, because of over-zealous government inter- 25 carefully selected school leaders on ways and means to
ference and regulation, private schools and their representa- reinvent K-12 education in the post-Covid era, as well as their
tive associations have been busy over the past five months suggestions on implementation of the progressive mandates
petitioning the courts to annul government diktats, instead of NEP 2020.

AUGUST 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 71