Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said during her budget speech on Tuesday that the Center has proposed to set up a digital university, develop e-content for schools and expand its educational TV channel scheme from 12 to 200 channels. However, education experts say that it is wrong to focus on digital learning given the uneven access to digital tools and the fact that children now returning to classes face a two-year learning gap.
“Due to the closure of schools due to the pandemic, our children, especially in rural areas, and children from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other weaker sections have lost almost 2 years of formal education. Mostly, these are children from government schools,” said the finance minister. “We recognize the need to provide complementary learning and create a flexible mechanism for education delivery.”
He expanded the educational television program to allow supplementary education in regional languages, setting up 750 virtual laboratories for science and mathematics, providing high quality e-mail in all spoken languages for distribution via internet, mobile phones. Announced plans to develop content. TV and radio through digital teachers, and a mechanism to equip teachers with digital tools. Ms Sitharaman said that the digital university will have programs in various Indian languages, it will be built on a network hub and spoke model in collaboration with best institutes of the country.
“When children return to physical classes the immediate focus should be on face-to-face teaching. Digital was essential during the lockdown, but we don’t have enough evidence to say what benefits it adds compared to in-person teaching,” said Rukmini Banerjee, CEO of Pratham, an educational NGO that reports annual Status of Education produces. On Monday, the Economic Survey widely cited the latest ASER to show the devastating impact of the pandemic on school children. Dr Banerjee suggested that the priority in the coming year should be on basic literacy and numeracy, even as many Class 3 students enter physical classes for the first time in this academic year.
“The pandemic has taught us a lesson – online learning should not be confused with meaningful learning. It may provide some engagement when schools are closed, but is academically inferior to the classroom and the individual within the school’s learning community, said Gurumurthy Kashinathan of the National Coalition on Education Emergency, noting that India has the most is the number of days the school is closed in the world. “In this context, there is a need for a large infusion of funds for schools – to repair schools that were closed, to provide teaching learning materials, to bridge the multi-level learning gap for student learning.” Support learning by filling all teacher vacancies and hiring additional teachers, provide support for community learning centers and involve parents in the process.”
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