Education system around the world is witnessing a historic Digital Revolution shove in due to the COVID pandemic. According to a UNESCO Covid Monitoring website, approximately 1.72 billion learners have been affected due to closure of educational institutions. The educational scenario in India is also no different and to some extent has gone into oblivion and chaos. India is home to one of the largest school systems in the world with 28% of Indian students falling in the age group of <14 years. That’s a staggering 364 million children in school. Needless to say, the centuries-old, chalk-talk teaching model is being transformed into one that is driven by technology.
Not just students in dilemma, with a lofty pupil-to-teacher ratio of 32:1, India is also host to roughly 11 million teachers. Not just for the learners, the shift from traditional to online teaching was a challenge to the educators as they were neither equipped not prepared. The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to stop physical classes and shift to online teaching. This move has highlighted two pitfalls of Indian Education systems: preparedness of the teachers; and the pupil-teacher ratio, which determines the quality of education.
A staggering 84% of teachers reported facing challenges in delivering education digitally with close to half the teachers facing issues related to the internet, that included both signal issues and data expenses. According to UDISE 2019-20, only one in four teachers in India was trained to use a computer for teaching. The share of such teachers was even lower in government schools. Also, there were wide disparities among states, with Gujarat training 57% of its teachers while M.P. training only 9% of them. While most states had an acceptable pupil-teacher ratio, the ratio was above the recommended value in some states, especially in higher education. While a high pupil-teacher ratio is a concern even during physical classes, its importance has only increased with online teaching.
While highlighting the lack of resources, two out of every five teachers lack the necessary devices to deliver education digitally; the situation is particularly grave in UP and Chhattisgarh where 80% and 67% of teachers respectively lack the requisite devices to deliver education online. The challenges are directly linked to a lack of teacher preparedness — less than 20% of teachers reported receiving orientation on delivering education digitally while in Bihar and Jharkhand, the figure was less than 5%.
Lack of appropriate materials and resources (especially when dealing in regional languages), technical problems, and lack of internet facilities and constant power cuts were some of the challenges that teachers faced during their virtual classes. Private schools could still afford upgrading themselves with better internet, made to design curriculums, training of teachers, but the situation in government schools, especially in rural set ups was devastating.
Other than the technological issues various other hurdles faced during online classes were figuring out online class etiquette, parents hovering during online classes are an issue, maintaining discipline online is tough, etc. It is not technology and training alone that posed a roadblock. Many teachers discovered that students don’t actively engage as much as they do in a real classroom. Students turn off mics and teachers are met with an uncomfortable lull in class when no one answers a question or responds. Online classes were becoming laughingstock.
While COVID 19 pandemic has been a disaster for the world; continuing taking billion of lives all around the world, but it has also proven to be a blessing in disguise pertaining to the much-needed push towards the digitization of Education system pedagogy in India. While a lot of brain storming, discussions are being held, when few states have geared up to open the schools, nothing is certain as we expect a third Covid wave anytime soon. This has encouraged some sort of a permanent tilt, if not a complete shift, to online education. The Government of India has taken the cognizance of the situation and call of the hour and the inaccessibility to physical classrooms is accelerating even in the revolutionary National Education Policy (NEP) 2021, which has been recently drafted with digital pedagogy at its heart. This year, International Literacy Day 2021, falling on 8th September, also focuses on “Literacy for a human-centred recovery: Narrowing the digital divide,” especially on the role of educators and changing pedagogies.
The lockdown has accelerated adoption of digital technology. School, educational institutes, analytics, computer, data management methods and online education solutions have cohesively united to work in tandem and improve in quality and delivery time to handle such situations. The educators, especially of the rural set ups of India, who are struggling the most have also pulled up their socks for matching the pace in the Digital Marathon with rest of India. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing gap between policy discourse and reality was brought to notice amongst the educators across India.
Teachers now admit that this is an ideal time to experiment and deploy new tools to make education delivery meaningful to students who can’t go to campuses. It’s a chance to be more efficient and productive while developing new and improved professional skills/knowledge through online learning and assessment. It is also a fact that use of technology in education is resulting in different concepts in the system, for instance the move from teacher-centric education to student-centric education. It was a monumental haul up, but teachers pulled together as government, NGOs are organizing online courses to aid their staff in handling the situation.
Our educators have shown some valiant zeal to upgrade and revolutionize Indian Education System. With scarcity of resources, training, and policies, they have been working tirelessly to cope with Covid-19 impact and ensure that the learning remains a continuous process virtually. Connecting to students and their parents through digital platforms seamlessly and bridge every possible gap in their capacities and tackling the situation with unmatched dedication and dexterity. They have made these testing times into an ideal time to accept technology and its latest offerings to make education delivery to students more efficient and make it more productive through online learning and assessments. Our ‘Education Warriors’ are certainly taking all steps to help strengthen the country’s digital learning infrastructure in the long run and the country shall be indebted to their valour.
(Views are personal)
