Digital hole in district schools - Many students do not have smartphones or computers

Mita Mukherjee   |  TT  |   Salt Lake   |   19.08.20  : More than half the students of most state-aided schools outside Calcutta do not have a smartphone, laptop or a computer and are not attending online classes, according to reports submitted by the schools.

Many state-aided schools in districts have been conducting classes through Whats-App and email since mid-April, according to a senior official of the school education department. The schools send study materials and notes to students through WhatsApp and email and teachers are supposed to take feedback from the pupils through video calls.

The heads of several schools have informed the school education department that more than half their students do not have smart devices and have not been in touch with the teaching-learning system since online classes started, a school education department official said.

A small number of teachers in some schools had taken a personal initiative and reached out to the students with study materials. “The bulk of the students lacking smart devices is completely out of the education system,” said the official.  

The school education department had asked all state-aided schools to send reports stating how many students of their institutions had smart devices and were using them to attend online classes.

“The reports started arriving on Sunday evening,” an official in the school education department said.

The situation is starkly different in Calcutta. Reports from schools in these areas say more than 85 per cent students had been attending online classes regularly and most students have smart devices. At several schools in the city, almost 100 per cent students have the devices and are attending online classes regularly.

City-based state-aided schools use WhatsApp, email, Zoom and Google Meet for teaching.

The headmistress of a city school that conducts online teaching through WhatsApp and Google Meet cited an example to highlight the level of students’ participation in online teaching: “We have 39 students studying math in Class XII. All 39 attend classes daily.”

The report submitted by a school near Madhyamgram, in North 24-Parganas, states that only 57 of the 145 students in classes between V and X have a smartphone, laptop or a computer.

The school has 27 students enrolled in Class X.

Thirteen have the devices and the remaining 14 students have not attended the classes, though they will be writing Madhyamik next year.

Only four out of 26 students in Class V in the institution have a smart device. The remaining 22 students have not been in touch with the school since April.

In the same school, out of 23 students in Class VI, only eight have a smart device. In Class VIII, five out of 22 students have smart devices and the rest are not attending the teaching sessions.

The report from a school in Diamond Harbour, in South 24-Parganas, states that only 45 of the 97 students in Class V have a smart device at home. Of the 151 students in Class VI, only 61 have such a device at home.

The data to be gleaned from the reports is likely to be used to devise strategies if schools can’t be reopened in the next few months.

“Around five months have passed since the lockdown was imposed. We still don’t know how long the schools will remain closed. We need to have a proper planning for online classes if the schools remain shut for many more months,” the official said.

(Courtesy & source- https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/calcutta/coronavirus-lockdown-digital-hole-in-district-schools/cid/1789434)