Low Income, High Fee- Why Fewer Children May Join Private Schools in 2021

Business Standard Low income, high fee: Why fewer children may join private schools in 2021

More than 80% of parents with children studying in government schools reported that education was "not delivered" during the lockdown

Fourteen-year-old Alisha Saini loves to study. "I understand everything I am taught in school and what I don't, didi next-door helps me understand," she said. But she couldn't access online classes, between March 24 and August 2020, when the government senior secondary school in Dorasar, in northern Rajasthan was shut, like all other schools in the country, because of the COVID19-induced lockdown. (The Rajasthan lockdown began on Sunday, March 22.)

Teachers would WhatsApp lesson links to students, but few students could access those, and few of those who could access understood what was being taught, survey data, students and teachers told us. Even bright students like Alisha were unable to keep up. "My father has a smartphone but he is out of the village at least 15 days a month for work," she said. Alisha's father helps run a small eatery (bhojanalaya) in Jaipur, three and a half hours from their home.

"This has been a devastating sort of year," said Bikkrama Daulet Singh, managing director at Central Square Foundation (CSF), a nonprofit working on school education. "There is going to be an impact on student learning."

More than 80% of parents with children studying in government schools reported that education was "not delivered" during the lockdown, because families did not have digital devices or access to digital learning, a survey by nonprofit Oxfam India in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh in May and June found.

This problem is not unique to India. At least 463 million students globally were unable to access remote learning during school closures because of COVID-19, either due to a lack of remote learning policies or lack of equipment needed for learning at home, UNICEF had found.

We spoke to experts on how children can make up for the learning losses during the pandemic and what lies in store for the education sector in 2021.