By Sadat Hussain*
COVID-19 has been a relentless challenge for society, with wave after wave disturbing the normal rhythm of life and the deaths of millions of people across the world. Even as some sense of normalcy returns post-Omicron, with the sight of happy children returning to school in their pristine uniforms, there are many unresolved issues at the root. Beyond the effects of the disease itself, the hurried and unplanned restrictions & lockdowns created chaos in society and its institutions. The pandemic deeply impacted the health and health system of the world and the education system, economic system, and political system. In the Indian context, it has been established by various studies that the public health system was totally exposed. Images of bodies floating along the Ganga to the desperate pleas for medical help on Whatsapp groups, the scars of the pandemic remain. Along with the health system, the rot of which stood exposed, the education system, too, has revealed its flaws.
During the first wave itself, when the education system tried to hurriedly shift from a long-running offline teaching-learning system to a poorly planned online system of the education system, the initial challenges were the digital divide and the (un)preparedness and training of teachers and students to use the online tools. From lack of mobile data to suicides over the absolute poverty that prevented students from logging in, the sudden online transition in a so-called Digital India was more of a shock than anything else.
This is why the theorization of ‘learning loss’ has emerged. Educators worry that students in the current system, particularly younger ones, have a tenuous grasp of foundational literacy. Many empirical studies also have established learning loss. However, there is an issue with the term itself. In a public seminar, Professor Anita Rampal, AIFRTE, preferred to call it ‘learning deprivation’ because deprivation, unlike loss, involves an operational failure to provide for education and establishes that many agents and actors failed to chalk out any plan to teach students. The state, in short, was unable to provide quality education and resulting in the active loss of foundational literacy and numeracy. The Indian government, during the direst period of the pandemic, like many other governments across the world, chose to hide their failures by pointing to an extraordinary situation that could not be worked around. But the reality was that no concrete solutions for education or health were provided even though they could have been. Thus, the active term ‘deprivation’ is preferable over the passive ‘loss’.
As schools are reopening, I would like to bring your attention to two critical studies to establish the general phenomenon of learning loss/learning deprivation. Studies by UNICEF and Azim Premji University observed the learning loss. UNICEF observed that,
• In India, 80 percent of children aged 14-18 years reported lower levels of learning than when physically at school.
• In India, 42 percent of children between 6-13 years reported not using any remote learning during school closures.
“School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” said George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia. He also added that “Even when a family has access to technology, children are not always able to access it. As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”
APU initially has conducted a study of their own schools and found that in one of their schools in Tonk district, around 60% of students could not access digital classes. In their experience, online classes were ineffective. One more study during August 2021 suggested that:
• 92% of children have lost one specific language ability from the previous year across all classes.
• On average, 82% of children have lost one specific mathematical ability from the previous year across all classes.
These studies should not be seen in isolation, and if we assess our surroundings, we most probably get similar results. Learning loss suggests that even if the state resolves the digital divide, the issue of learning deprivation will persist.
During the early phase of COVID-19, there was a general fear of school dropouts. And this fear came true when a parliamentary committee on Education, women, children, youth, and sports in August 2021 1 found that the dropout percentage was increased by 17% for Boys and 15% for girls as per UDISE Report 2019-20. Moreover, this gap has increased in the next session of parliament during Winter-2021-22. The report suggested that 320 million students were affected by school closure, and most of them were girls.
As ANI reported on the 21st of February, 2022 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a webinar organized by the Ministry of Education, has expressed that the digital divide is shrinking in India. He also said that digital education had kept the education system alive during the pandemic. But is it merely alive, the way patients on life support are? Or is there a more substantive plan for recovery and wellness? Did quality education, in any sense, exist during the pandemic? Concern and demand over the reopening of the schools, colleges, and universities suggest that current online teaching and learning (during a pandemic) failed to impart education. The reports about learning loss/learning deprivation also indicate that online education cannot substitute offline teaching and learning. The solution in the name of ‘Metaverse’ needs to be checked and questioned whether the future technology will resolve the issue of accessibility and learning outcome both. Neither in the recent budget nor the speech of PM recently on the webinar mentioned above has talked about learning loss and increasing drop-outs. Isn’t it ignoring the concerns of children a deprivation?
The Way Ahead
Some crucial suggestions can be discussed here. First, UNICEF 2 suggested the three broad groups intervene. They are:
The State, Teacher Community, Parents and Civil Society.
The State:
- Ensure safe reopening of the schools with quality education.
- Vaccinate the teachers.
- Train the teachers to use the hybrid model, guidance to teachers on engaging students with different learning techniques, and expand investment in education.
Teacher Community: Assess the children’s level of learning and foundational literacy and ensure learning recovery.
Civil Society: Become a bridge between the government and teachers.
Parents: Support and guidance for home-based learning.
Sajid Ahmed, an education practitioner from Chitarpur, Jharkhand, who runs an alternative school called ‘Schoolasium’, says that currently, in the context of school reopening, the government and civil society needs to stress on assessing the students what exactly learning has been lost. This has to happen scientifically and address the problems accordingly. He added, “One data suggests that only 24% of students have attended online classes across India, and major share among these students is from Kerala. In the context of Jharkhand, only 15% attended the online classes.”
In this context, there are some practices and recommendations. A more recent approach to recovering learning loss is the AICU (Academic Intensive Care Unit) of Shaheen Education Foundation and the Delhi Government’s three-stage formulas. Shaheen Education Foundation
has introduced AICU 3 to recover the learning loss. Teaching commences from the current level of understanding of each student. The teaching method in AICU involves; tailor-made for individual ability and learning pattern, one-to-one teaching with individual attention, daily classwork & homework, doubt clarification with easy examples, practicing to achieve good handwriting, and teaching material is provided.
Delhi Government in Jun 2021 introduced three-stage action plans 4 to the students of Nursery to 12th Standard. In the first stage, schools will start to reconnect with the students. Schools and teachers will contact students and parents and update the contact details in this stage. Schools will give emotional support in the second stage and bridge the learning gap. In the third stage, schools will start providing online classes and hard copies of assignments and worksheets for the parents who do not have digital access to education. Since education is on the concurrent list, the state governments need to take innovative steps to overcome this scenario by a rigorous and scientific assessment of children and training teachers to assist the children in recovering from learning loss.
*The author is a Ph.D. Scholar at Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
