EDUCATION IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC
Unforeseen disasters can sometimes unleash the unimaginable situations, although unintentionally. Today businesses, economies, nations and human lives are suffering from pandemic’s impact. The education of 300 million students has been disrupted worldwide.As of 7 June 2020, approximately 1.725 billion learners are currently affected due to school closures in response to the pandemic. According to UNICEF monitoring, 134 countries are currently implementing nationwide closures and 38 are implementing local closures, impacting about 98.5 percent of the world’s student population. Closures of educational institutions impact not only students, teachers, and families. but have far-reaching economic and societal consequences.
But there’s a flip side to this dismal development: Online education businesses are registering a spike worldwide, and carbon footprints have dipped significantly as people are working out of homes and corporates are offering free online courses for employee upskilling. It’s new-age-education in the time of Corona!
Nearly 600,000 students travel overseas for their higher education every year. With COVID 19 the prospect of that happening anytime soon, is bleak. Online education is their saviour at this critical time when the Coronavirus scrounge ravaging geographies.
In India, the online education revolution has been brewing for a while, with rapid global technological advances in the backdrop. Conservative academic leadership, archaic regulations and lack of understanding has held it back. It is unfortunate that a crisis like the one we are facing now was needed to bring this issue in the forefront. In the current situation universities and institutions are scrambling to find solutions to problems created by themselves. In contrast several leading universities globally have seamlessly transitioned to online learning.
In India, even before the lockdown was imposed, social distancing was already there in practice. As the cases of corona started rising people became too cautious which made it a compulsory need of the hour to close all the places prone to gatherings and crowds including educational institutions, offices, markets, malls, gyms etc. Many educational institutions, without wasting any time, started online lessons and with the cooperation of both students and teachers, online education became a success in India too. Since the day lockdown was imposed, every single school and college in India is trying their level best to provide lessons online to their students without wasting any time. From kindergarten level to senior level of education, all classes are being done online. Even the tests, assessments and evaluation are also being done online. But even before that, preparation was needed. With young children at home from school and their normal schedules disrupted, parents are needing to make schedules for children who would normally be in school. Even with online classes, parents need to help younger children navigate school on the computer, and parents with kindergarten children are unable to work unless other arrangements can be made. There were many teachers, parents and students who didn’t know how to use those online education apps so they went through trainingsthemselves and within a short span of time, everybody became used to it which is itself is a sign that “hard times teaches us good lessons”. Not just the academic education but we can learn anything online now to make our quarantine productive and develop our skills.
Despite the above challenges, the shift in education also means that more opportunities are arising and becoming available to students. An emphasis is being put on online and distance education — making affordable programs more relevant and known to the public. Many institutions are providing free and certified online skill development courses to improve our skills and resume too. But still there is another side of the coin, the darker one. There are many students from those backward parts of India who are barely coping up with hard times. Lack of awareness, lack of finances and technical know-how have lag behind these students. Unfortunately, many families rely on the public-school system, not only for education, but for necessities like food and childcare. With schools cancelled, many children are left without proper meals, and parents are forced to take off work in order to care for their young children.
Although many schools are continuing online, many students do not have access to computers or the internet in their homes. Without the proper technology, many students will be forced to miss out on their education until further solutions can be arranged.
They are now deprived of education which shows where the government and education and technology is still lacking and still there is a long way to go.
The opportunity for online learning is now. Corona virus has given a unique opportunity to drive deep impactful changes. Educational institution who still resist this change are less likely to grow. Radical change is needed in mindset, policy and conviction. We have welcomed technology in every sphere of our life and it has made a tremendous positive impact. Our digital natives are ready to dive into the fray for online learning too.
Since the UGC and CBSE have still not given any final statement regarding exams for schools and universities, students are in a fix about their future and career. Delay in board exam results and university examination is delaying the future of the students. Fee submission is one the most significant issues which was not given much attention, many universities are still charging same amount of fees. As the whole economy is suffering from downfall and crisis, businesses and jobs are being collapsed, these universities and school should have considered this point and may be not waving off the whole fee but it should be reduced to half with some more time to submit it. They are not just forcing students to pay fee on time but imposing fine in case of late submission. In this case what will happen to those who couldn’t afford to pay. Education is everyone’s right and in these hard times these institutions should help their students the best they could instead of just taking advantage of the situation.
The current situation is like a mirror for all of us.Pandemic has posed several challenges not just in the field of education but in every sphere of life. It has given us many new challenges which could be opportunities to learn and from which we can gain and evolve ourselves through these hard times. It has shown us our shortcomings, our weaknesses and the points where we still need to work upon and improve. Future is still not clear for us and current situation is already difficult in many ways. All we can do is hope for the best and do our best in present scenario and be a support to each other.