Coronavirus And The Education System – Analysis

Introduction

The education system is the only thing that is responsible for molding and shaping the raw thoughts, ethics, and morals of human progenies. But today this system is under a huge invasion because of extended lockdown period (Sohini Sarkar 2020 May 29) because of the spread of communicable and airborne diseases (Ramya Kannan 2020 July 12). This problem becomes worse when it has captured the whole human earth and made the human civilization its nesting territory (Owen Amos 2020 April 3). And at last, we have no escape except to hold our ground and fight with it with full strength. To regain dominance, we must gather the information of huge list of casualties. Education system is one of our big causalities. 

Education system (ES) is a socially driven place that involves learning with interaction with material and people. This pandemic has destroyed the ES functioning. And it’s not only because of the cease of the education process but it has stolen one of the important aspects of student life – time that determines the level of knowledge and prosperity of a student. Yes, it’s time that has been stolen. All the students quarantine at home with no work and a man of no work has no existence. 

This study is an attempt to focus the results of the invasion of COVID-19 on ES. It is very important to understand so that whenever we find the cure of the problem we can implement it as soon as possible. Firstly, Indian education needs to realize that the absorption power of every student cannot be the same. Hence, the teaching method also cannot remain the same for every student in a class of 30. Some students have faster learning pace and some are slow. Teachers must have a keen eye for observing each of their students. Though it is not humanly possible for a single teacher to pay attention to every student, schools must start looking at the use of technologies like artificial intelligence which can become the helping hand to the teachers as well as students.        

And secondly, education is not always about becoming a big or rich person. It should be about humanism. Students must also be taught in-depth about the morals of life and inculcated with humanistic values. They should be taught that life is much beyond money and success is not measured in money. It is rightly said that when a child came after 16 years of education. He became knowledgeable ignorant. 

When we tried to set a system where accumulating knowledge in books considers being intelligent, miss the whole point of life. There is very deep intelligence rooted in our system and nature when explored does the miracles. Ayurveda is a fine example where every leaf has medicinal properties which are yet to explore. If someone energies should be raised to a sufficient level, everything in nature response. Ayurvedic system developed from this. It’s time to introduce those ancient ways of teaching and methods that help to explore this in every human being. Raising consciousness of every human being is the only solution. Painting problems with colours of humanity, morality, etc. will not work too long. Definitely it’s time to revive the Vedic way of enhancement of human Intellectuals, culture, yoga and these should be incorporated into the students life from very early age of life. It’s helping the students to grow with multi dimensional aspects and not just another book worm. A similar model was started by Sadhguru called “Isha samskriti“, which is available on YouTube. 

During the period of lockdown we realized that a lot of things need to be changed in the education system. Students don’t like this new online system as they are attached to blackboard writing skills.

Effects on Lifestyle  

COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis and everybody is struggling with health and financial issues as well as students are waiting schools to reopen once again. Students are stuck at home and cannot go anywhere but still connected with teachers and classmates through online classes. There are numerous things which had changed.

Positive Attributes  

• No more tension to wake up early in the morning.
• Spend the maximum time with family who always encourage us to do new things.
• Creative minds come out through painting, dancing, singing, writings, gardening etc.
• Home bound yet connected with everyone through video calls.
• Yoga becomes new friend.
• Online class and submission of assessments through online mode become a new way of learning.
• ICT is now in trends to build new INDIA during the epidemic. 
• Bye-Bye to junk food, cooking healthy food at home now-a-days and promoting eat healthy think wealthy.
• Moral value increases and students can learn so many great values through grandparents and parents nowadays.
• Enhancing education towards digital, intellectual and cognitive approach.
• Building the importance of health and education in our life.
• Promoting vocational Courses through online. 
• Vocal to local is a new Atam Nirbar Bharat.
• Effects of pollution on globe decreases and we again hear the chanting of birds singing in a morning.
• Stereotype of cooking by girls are no longer an issue.
• Rise in blended learning, to make the system flexible and accessible.
• Rise in collaborative working, decreases intolerance among students.

Negative Attributes   

• Students who are without internet facilities are failing to join the on-line classes.
• Not everyone understand the use of apps on Android, parents are not that much aware of zoom app, how to use it
• Class discipline during the online classes is missed.
• Network, internet speed in rural areas or the area under the LOC, LAC and border areas faced so many challenges during online classes. 
• Safety and Security of data and information is also an issue, using apps for the online classroom.
• Lack of ICT resources.
• Passive learning by students, they didn’t get proper attention.
• Unprepared teachers for online education, which enhance the quality of learning.
• Changing format of student recruitment, as it increases insecurity among students. 

Suggestions    

• Training session for teachers through a webinar.
• Video modes to make them understand how to conduct the class, submit test or paper
• Development of secure apps and software’s
• E-Learning programs to be promoted in urban as well as rural area school, colleges.
• Demonstrates the learning to be focused more 
• Skilful and vocational learning should be promoted.
• Time management is must for every online class just like offline classes we were used to attend before the pandemic.

Student-Teacher Interaction:

Guru Nanak says “Let no man in the world live in delusion. Without a Guru none can cross over to the other shore”. As the potential step to prevent the march of viruses are lockdown, isolation, social distance and quarantine led to prevent the interaction of students from teachers. Interaction is the base of any Education. As in class teacher not only teaches subjects syllabus but also helps in giving moral and ethical thought. 

Teaching not only includes reading of books words and giving question. Teaching involves departing of knowledge by using word that is easily grabbed by the students. And if the meaning is not clear it can be understood with real life. These may include discussion over its meaning in different perspective. And as every student have different mind vessel so they understand the meaning in different aspect. But it is necessary to organized the meaning of word as per the context and as per the requirement. Hence, teaching the aspect of utilization of word as per the situation and interest is a very critical aspect which can only be performed by teacher.

Moreover, we should not ignore that human being is a social animal. Interaction with teachers helps the students to understand their communicational and social issues and modify their raw skills which were very necessary like carving a design into a rough stone. Hence, social interaction helps to remove the shyness of the student and give them a confidence to speak in the world out of school. 

Furthermore, it is well known that understanding of thoughts and meaning required interaction of word and use of any word carry an emotion or any feelings. Therefore, in interaction with student’s teachers not only understand the doubts or curiosity of a students but also the feeling or the emotion behind the curiosity. Teaching and learning are very much dependent on interaction process. But as per this COVID-19 situation interaction in school is very much dangerous for any one due chances of community transfer or mass airborne contamination.

Practical Exposure:

In various field of studies, it is necessary that we not only read and write but we have to observe either the surrounding environment or the given material or certain scientific changes in laboratory. This observation is based on the guideline of the instructor and helps the students in developing their observation skill and sharps their reasoning skill about various fundamentals process. This activity trained the students to understand the practical aspects of knowledge and how to adapt as per their requirement in the work. 

These types of practices not only provide knowledge but develop the working skill of students which provide them comfort during their time of employment. 

But due to the spread of infectious viruses the practice of practical learning is ceased. As the practical equipment goes in the hand of many people so there are chances that the equipment might work as an agent of transport for the infection viruses. And as the lab and laboratory equipment’s are shared among the students and teachers so there are the chances of community transfer. Hence not only the theoretical aspect of E.S. but also the practical exposure is affected by the epidemic. 

Loss of Peer/ Competitive Environment:

From childhood, children possess an instinct to be better than other in every field/activity. This can be observed by the boosting nature of children in school. This nature pumps them to try or to work to become better than their friends. Hence this nature seeds the base of competitive skills. It also influences positive characters (Smith, L. K. C. et al., 1984). This nature helps the student to keep trying harder and harder to become better than other and the one who is already better they try harder to maintain their position. 

Moreover, this nature also develops their mental state of self-consciousness that inspires or motivates children to create their identity among their peer group and pumps their adrenaline to keep trying harder.  This promotes the students to work hard and get success and makes a student confident. They start recognizing the profit of hard work, their self-power and their thinking skills and enable to survive in the competitive world.

Furthermore, school, college and institution are not only meant to trained a student on the basis of knowledge, but motivate them to overcome many social barriers. Help them to explore different people, their way of thinking and of understanding to generate social communication skill to become better in communication mediated world. Moreover, institution is also a perfect setup to develop the basic psychology of children and help them to act like a mature person and think smart.

But pandemic scenario has restricted any social gathering of students leading to a very bad effect on the psychology of a student. Mostly children share their problem and their thought with friends as they feel shy or fear to speak with their family. This activity helps them to open up and relax their anxiety and stress.  But during lock down students can’t go to school and can’t meet their friends, creating a mental stress on the psychology of the children.  

Loss of Physical Education and Drill:

Institution not only meant to train the students mentally. They also focus a lot on the physical fitness of the students. Health is wealth, hence to train the brain; it is necessary that it works properly and stay healthy. For that yoga and exercises are practice in the school daily. There is regular body weight exercise and athletic and fun games that not only keep students fit and active but very important in breaking the monotony of life. These games are one of the many sources of children entertainment. Moreover, games also teach them how to work in group and how to increase the productivity of collaboration. Hence, they admire the strength of unity by performing the outdoor games.

But, after the initiation of lockdown children can’t even play in their neighbor. Actually, performing any sports which required collaboration is hell for them. This increases the chances of anxiety and depression in children and promotes feeling of loneliness. Hence, sports activity in education organization is uncertain today (Dhananjay Roy & Anil Dias 2020 May 22).

No Competitive Events or Exams:

Due to rise in Covid-19, national and state level competitive exam have been postponed some students are struggling to cope with online learning. Swati Choubey a civil service aspirant, said, “There is an issue when the civil services exam will be conducted. Last year, Interviews were stopped midway, so it becomes difficult to gauge when the preliminary exam will be held this year. Another aspirant, Harsh Kumar, who was preparing for the NDA examination for the last one year, said, “The test was scheduled to be conducted on April 19 but was called off, I may not be able to sit exam as age bar is likely to be crossed and all my preparations would go to waste. The state governments in the second week of March, across the country began closing down schools and colleges temporarily as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. This is an important time for the education sector – board examinations, Nursery school admissions, Entrance tests of various universities and Competitive examinations, among others, are all held during this period.

School and university closures will not only have a short-term impact on the continuity of learning days pass by with no immediate solution to stop for more than 285 million young learners in India but also engender far-reaching economic and societal consequences. The main think that was affected by closures is structure of schooling and learning which include teaching methodologies

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the higher education sector as well, which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future. A large number of Indian students – next only to China – enroll in universities abroad, especially in countries worst affected by the pandemic, the US, UK, Australia and China. Many such students have now been barred from leaving these countries. If the situation persists, in the long run, a decline in the demand for international higher education is expected.

Cease of All Education Plans for Poor Children’s

Third world counties have huge population of poor people who can’t finance their children education, even hard to arrange funds for food. Therefore, these third world countries have come up with various education schemes in order to promote the statics of education in their countries. As these programs are initiated at grass root level so the interaction of people and children are some critical aspect for distributing the basic information from people to people by using a basic way of going door to door and taking about the programs. Some of these programs are as follow: –

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE)

As per RTE rule every child has a right to full time elementary education of acceptable and it quality should be fair to all students in a formal school which meets certain required norms and standards. ‘Free education’ means that no child, other than a child who has been accepted by his or her parents to a school which is not defended by the suitable Government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education. ‘Compulsory education’ casts an obligation on the suitable Government and local management bodies to give and take care attendance, admission and completion of elementary education by all children range 6-14 of age group. But as per the lockdown and social distancing measures this rule has been paralyzed. The people who come under this rule are not at all efficient to afford latest technology for providing an online education to their children. Hence, for poor children currently there is no education system. 

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), 

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is Government of India’s flagship programme for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner, as mandated by 86th amendment to the Constitution of India making free and compulsory Education to the Children of 6-14 years’ age group, a Fundamental Right. SSA is being implemented in partnership with State Governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations. The programme seeks to open new schools in those habitations which do not have schooling facilities and strengthen existing school infrastructure through provision of additional class rooms, toilets, drinking water, maintenance grant and school improvement grants. Existing schools with inadequate teacher strength are provided with additional teachers, while the capacity of existing teachers is being strengthened by extensive training, grants for developing teaching-learning materials and strengthening of the academic support structure at a cluster, block and district level. SSA seeks to provide quality elementary education including life skills. SSA has a special focus on girl’s education and children with special needs. SSA also seeks to provide computer education to bridge the digital divide.

Samagra Shiksha

The Union Budget, 2018-19, has proposed to treat school education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. Samagra Shiksha – an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class 12 has been, therefore, prepared with the broader goal of improving school effectiveness measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes. It subsumes the three schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE). 

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)

This scheme was launched in March, 2009 with the objective to enhance access to secondary education and to improve its quality. The implementation of the scheme started from 2009-10. It is envisaged to achieve an enrolment rate of 75 per cent from 52.26 per cent in 2005-06 at secondary stage of implementation of the scheme by providing a secondary school within a reasonable distance of any habitation. The other objectives include improving quality of education imparted at secondary level through making all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, removing gender, socio-economic and disability barriers, providing universal access to secondary level education by 2017, i.e., by the end of 12th Five Year Plan and achieving universal retention by 2020.

Mid-day Meal Scheme

 Mid-Day Meal in schools has had a long history in India. In 1925, a Mid-Day Meal Programme was introduced for disadvantaged children in Madras Municipal Corporation. By the mid-1980s three States viz. Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the UT of Pondicherry had universalized a cooked Mid-Day Meal Programme with their own resources for children studying at the primary stage by 1990-91 the number of States implementing the mid-day meal program with their own resources on a universal or a large scale had increased to all states and UTs.

Scholarship

For deserving students MHRD is also providing different kind of scholarship so that students can go for higher education. 

All the above includes mass interaction of children education staff and other working staff. Presently all of these programs are paralyzed as it is very dangerous to promote interaction during the time of pandemic.  Hence all the supporting efforts are meaningless presently. And itvaries risky to initiate this plan until the COVID-19 is not completely eradicated.

Inefficacy of online system

Due to stay home situation, it is very hard to depart education because time is very critical aspect. To save the time of student, education institution has tries to move online in order to deliver the knowledge. But there are lots of hurdle of this new technology (Praveen Sudevan 2020 May 11and Remya Lakshmanan 2020 April 9). Some of them are as follow: –

Cost of Internet 

No doubt, the price of internet facilities is very much cheaper in India and has really progressed a lot during the last decade. But if we just take the pandemic situation into consideration and consider the news that many people have lost their job due to pandemic preventive lockdown. Those people are either living on their savings or they are taking loan from someone for their basic need. At this critical situation spending money for education as well as online facilities is very difficult task for the parents, especially having low earnings. Hence many student families can’t afford the internet facilities in order to adapt as per the new online teaching and learning facilities.

High Cost of Devices Such as Computer and Smart Phone

Most of the Indian and third world countries population lives in rural area. At this advance age of technology most of them can’t afford it. And most of them who live in cities are working on daily wages. There daily income is such low that they hardly afford their lifestyle. Therefore, buying this high-tech smart devise is very difficult for them.

Improper Distribution of Network System

In spite of having good network, service provider most of the areas are either not connected with proper network facilities or the network strength is very low that they can hardly call any one. Even many areas are facing lots of call dropping issue.

Problem in Operating Software and Apps

With the advancement of IT world everyday many new software and mobile application are coming in market. Smart phone and internet are very new for most of the people. Therefore, understanding each new software and different application for students of ruler is very difficult. 

Low quality of lecture delivery

Generally, in any school or colleges the time duration of one lecture is about 40-45 min. But in online class teacher always try to shorten the literature of the theories use less example. These shortening of content in theory in less time reduce the quality of knowledge students are receiving. Moreover, within these time teachers not only teach but circulate other information of school proceedings. Moreover, it is also found that generally in school students spent 6 hours but online classes are of 30 – 60 min every day during lockdown. Same is happening with college students.   As techniques of online teaching are not properly managed, the understanding of subjects reduces to very low extent.  And the practical classes are not even in the schedule of these online classes. As its impossible to aware the students about experiment as both teachers and students are in home without any laboratory equipment’s. Furthermore, we should also understand that this online system is totally new for both teachers and students. Neither teachers are trained for that nor are students aware of that.

Lesser Interaction with Teachers

Online classes are schedule for less time and teachers instructed to carry on discussion of doubts only few min. It is very difficult for teachers to convey the information in very short time. Students felt it difficult to clear the doubts due less interaction with teachers or to go for any other discussion about the topic of discussion.

Burden of Assignment

Teachers are bound to complete the syllabus in very short interval of time. Hence to complete the important question or revision they provide lots of assignment to students. Learning from online class is not going well and there are always bundles of doubts from the topic of discussion. It’s very hard for a student to complete the assignment in the given interval of time. Moreover, many students don’t have any education guide in family so, they are on their own for completing the assignment. 

Less Invigilation by Teacher

Students’ progress and their daily work is measured when the teacher check there note book and invigilate their homework. Students do a lot of mistake while performing the task. Its teachers who check their entire mistake word to word and let them know what to correct. As the only way of interaction is video conferencing, it’s very difficult to check their written work. Moreover, students try to send their work by the means of digital document. But even for teacher it’s hard to operate the digital document from the student they are teaching.

Lack of Learning Environment 

School atmosphere is very important for a student for learning. At home children are bound to help their parents or they indulge in some talking or playing game. Moreover, school is created in such a manner that outside work doesn’t affect the learning or there should not be any kind of distraction. But at home students face a lot of distraction. Distraction could be in form of any construction site any work in neighbor some family member is enjoying TV or music at a very loud noise. Even nowadays children have a lot of fun and gaming material at home enough to deviate the mind of a student from studying and learning. 

Lack of Discipline, Interest, Punctuality and Collaboration during Online Class

Institutions work in a very discipline way. They are not only for teaching but also impart the art of discipline. Students have to follow several rules and regulation in school. But at home they are free from all the rules and discipline of school life. Although the students are learning from home yet they are very much irresponsible. Faculties too are facing problems for student that they either miss the class or if they attend the class they join vary late. Even many people join the class they don’t pay attention to the lecture and they do their gaming or movie work in side screen by putting either the mute or by switching the video off.

Change in Teaching Practices Reduces Interest of Students hence Poor Knowledge  

Adaptation is a very slow running process that evolve and organism either its mental state or its physical state for the present situation. Teaching practice which we are following is running from very long time. Hence, everyone is habitual and adapted to it. But the sudden change in teaching technique has affected the mindset of the student environment. Most of the time students are not concern about their studies. Institution and teachers are trying their level best but they are even found helpless in bringing the attention of the student back to their studies. Many times it has been seen that students don’t come up for the online class or they make them self so lazy that they do not complete their assignment or don’t give attention to this new adapting system.

This situation is not hidden from the eyes of the government. Therefore, government and education management organizations are taking valuable steps in order to maintain the balance of the wandering education system. Most of the implement rule where inefficient or not workable. These changing rules and instability of government and education management bodies has made student confuse and this confusion has reduced their interest in the studies   

Mood Swinging

As most of the teaching practices are online, children are getting addicted to the technology. But this addiction is more toward the negative perspective of technology. As today technology is very much available everywhere and the development of social media and gaming has grab the attention of students. Therefore, students who can afford the technology miss using it. The enormous power of internet today in the hand of unethical beings can never give a productive outcome. 

Furthermore, this world wide shut down of work has also affected the timetable and stress system of student life. Today as there is no work for the student therefore their mind is very much hunted by the fancy facilities of internet with limited productivity. This lockdown had made students vary much lazy and unproductive deviating the mindset from their long- and short-term goals of their life.

Global Scenario

COVID-19 has affected all levels of the education system, from pre-school to tertiary education. Different countries have introduced various policies, ranging from complete closure in Germany and Italy to targeted closure in the United Kingdom for all but the children of workers in key industries. Additionally, over 100 countries have imposed a nationwide closure of educational facilities. UNESCO estimates that close to 900 million learners have been affected by the closure of educational institutions.

The economic shock associated with the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be significantly larger than anything seen since the financial crisis of 2008/09. The spread of COVID-19 has already had a high human cost, and, with public health systems struggling to cope, these costs will continue to grow. The policies put in place by governments to slow the transmission of COVID-19 have led, in many countries, to a massive demand and supply shock. This has led to significant trade disruptions, drops in commodity prices, and the tightening of financial conditions in many countries. These effects have already led to large increases in unemployment and underemployment rates and will continue to threaten the survival of many firms worldwide.

The pandemic will create significant fiscal policy challenges. However, the fiscal policy will have the largest and most immediate effects on education financing. Government revenues are projected to fall as a consequence of the pandemic because of declining economic activity. As fiscal space is already limited in many countries, there is a danger that policy responses to the crisis will either be insufficient or will worsen macroeconomic conditions. Moreover, the overwhelming need to give priority to responding to the public health emergency and to strengthening safety nets is likely to reduce the amount of funding available for other public investments including education

Financial and Economic Issues 

Globally, COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over 13.7 million confirmed cases and over 586,000 deaths. It has also sparked fears of an impending economic crisis and recession. Social distancing, self-isolation and travel restrictions have led to a reduced workforce across all economic sectors and caused many jobs to be lost. Schools have also closed down till further orders.

Gaps in Government Funding 

Before the pandemic, governments were spending vastly different amounts on education. High-income countries on average were spending 43 times as much on the education of primary-school-aged children as the average low-income country. The disparities in spending were even larger when viewed over a child’s entire education career. By the age of 18, the average child growing up in a low-income country will have attended school for only eight years compared to 13 years in a high-income country. Overall, the average low income country government will have invested about US$1,300 on the average child’s education, while the average high-income country would have spent about US$110,000. Despite these vast spending inequalities, substantial progress had been made in increasing education investments in low and lower-middle-income countries and improving access to educational opportunities. It will be seriously difficult to continue to make progress in narrowing these gaps in spending and outcomes because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Controversy between Parents and Education Systems:

Parenting in this pandemic has seen all sorts of emotions emerge. Online learning and teaching is a beast unleashed on teachers and students alike. WhatsApp school groups have been buzzing on arguments over many technological hiccups with zoom classes, added pressure on parents to occupy their kids and demanded to continue pay hefty school fees. “If teachers are charging the full tuition fee, then please be around to teach during school hours and keep the children occupied,” said a parent who was cross with the new work from home scenario and unforeseen amount of hands-on parenting he had to do. There are also mothers like Kolkata-based Radhika Ralhan, who are juggling to keep up with school needs and stay at home (and work) with a life disrupted by the coronavirus, and are pushing schools to slash fees arguing that online classes are often a poor substitute. Madhuri Banga, based in Gurgaon along with the rest of her school group was upset that teachers found it “perfectly alright to teach 30 children in a 25-minute zoom class and are justifying that as teaching.” She got a lot of people on her side for the argument but it didn’t cut with the teachers or school management. Teachers on the other hand are reminding school management and parents that they too have a new learning curve and ‘just as many domestic commitments as any other parent.’ Are parents expecting way too much from teachers? “We are like any other employees, and we should get our fees too. In many other sectors people aren’t even attempting the efforts to go online like teachers have,” says Tanushree Bhandari who teaches class five in Mumbai. Let’s see the two sides and a detailed look at the arguments coming up.

The Parents

Classroom spaces are conducive to interaction, give students an opportunity to engage and promote learning say parents who are seeking discounts or complete fee relief during the lockdown or until schools open. To think that two or three zoom classes a day can replace the otherwise 8 hours a day study cum play sessions at school is plain unfair say parents. “And therefore, to pay the entire tuition fee for an hour a day via zoom is making them upset and raise questions. “Think about it, if you are paying 20000 rupees a month for your child’s tuition fee, that should amount to approx 1000 rupees per day of school. By suggesting that you will be charging 500 rupees per 30-minute zoom class, schools are giving parents a real headache about such calculations and spends for ‘continuing online education’,” asks Debrati Sinha, from Chandigarh. In the case of urban privately run schools, the fees may be much higher and such calculations may hit over a few thousand rupees per half hour.

Parents whose incomes are dependent on the economy running smoothly are facing even more hardships. A restaurant owner, who is already strapped for money to pay employees is protesting the fees saying this situation is sudden and unprecedented and “schools ought to think of those who may suddenly find they don’t have enough cash to pay chunks of school fees.

Education System

Parents demanding a cut in fees don’t recognize the kind of planning that goes into school set up. While fees are monthly, they are often arrived at by averaging out costs over the whole year. Schools have to pay staff and teachers. They don’t have the option of laying them off for a few months only. This must make the decision of the management tough. Even, teachers have enough on their plate too.  Like parents, they have to do work for student classes, put food on the table for their own family, doing their entire house work and get going in this pandemic.

“Some parents are asking for summer breaks to be cancelled to make up for studies via zoom classes. And then those who feel teachers should not be paid for summer holidays either,” Aarti Rao, a teacher is upset with parents for having such a view for teachers ‘who are selflessly there for their children.

School fee payment plea reaches SC — a look at how 12 HCs ruled on the issue since April. HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had in April asked private schools to reconsider their decisions on annual fee hikes and collecting quarterly fees during the coronavirus lockdown, there has been no uniformity on the subject across states. At least nine states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra and Odisha, have issued notifications to the schools in their jurisdiction, with varying relief — some allowing deferment of quarterly fees and others waiving fees except those specifically under tuition.

The matter also reached several high courts. While at least seven high courts have either stayed notifications barring schools from hiking fees or rejected petitions against collection of fees during the lockdown, two high courts so far have advocated for a dialogue between the stakeholders to come to a solution. In a setback for parents, the Bombay High Court on 26 June stayed the 8 May government resolution (GR) that barred schools and educational institutions from charging fees at a hiked rate for the 2020-21 session. This GR also prohibited educational institutions from collecting any balance fees for the year 2019-20 or fees for the year 2020-21 at once, and gave parents the option to deposit the fees monthly or quarterly. Aggrieved by the GR, several educational trusts running schools across the state approached the high court, leading to the stay.

But there was some good news for the parents too, from the high courts of Uttarakhand and Gujarat. Meanwhile, a petition has now been filed in the Supreme Court as well, demanding the waiver of private school fees for a period of three months, from April to July 2020, and seeking a direction to schools to not remove enrolled students due to non-payment of fees.

Conclusion 

Lockdown is the necessity of time and have to follow all the precautions of the COVID-19 era. If we stay alive we can focus on everything we have lost and can build again. But building the thing again in less time is a challenge. Under the situation, the only thing is to stay home and stay healthy. Besides that we have to track all the causalities happening to us, to our system and to our human civilization. We should learn from our mistake and adapt to present situation at the earliest possible.    

Survival needs a big sacrifice for our comfort. We have to consider our fault and weakness very seriously. Ignorant and lenient is not the demand of the situation. The error which is happening in our system because of the initialization of new rule and regulation need a vital update as well as to upgrade of personal skills. Imperative of the hour is to change not only our working pattern and platform but also change in the communicative skill of human being. Human being has to evolve their primitive way of working and overcome their weakness. Failure to tackle COVID-19 situation, have to sacrifice well-organized system of interaction and sharing of knowledge or direct civilization toward dooms day.

The only way to measure the effectiveness of a lesson is to measure students learning outcome at the end of the classes via online assessment and assignments. One must also think about the students studying in government schools. They are lack of internet facilities and approaches, teachers are unable to connect with them during lockdown, not every government school is well established and atam nirbar. Lots of students suffer during COVID-19. We need to help them and also made them efficient, sincerely hopes that these measures will help us to improve the teaching, learning experience for both teachers and learners, It’s a challenging task for all of us to enhance the better education among all with one education system.

*Dr Gursharan Singh Kainth and Ms Harpreet Kaur, Director General and Research Scholar, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies

REFERENCE

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