Skip to main content

Locked out? Only 8% of rural poor children studying online, 37% not at all: Survey

By Rosamma Thomas*

The catastrophic consequences of the prolonged lockdown since March 2020 were documented in a recent survey of 1,400 children from underprivileged backgrounds. The survey found that only 8% of rural children were studying online regularly; 37% are not studying at all. Most parents want schools to reopen soon, as half the children surveyed could barely read.
Primary and upper primary schools in India have been shut for 500 days now, and as expected, the disruption has caused many children to forget even what they had learnt.
“During this period, a small minority of privileged children were able to study online in the safety of their homes. The rest, however, were locked out of school without further ado. Some struggled to continue studying, online or offline. Many others gave up and spent time milling around the village or basti…” the report announcing this survey, which was conducted in August 2021 in 15 states and union territories – Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal -- said.
The survey was conducted by volunteers, mostly university students, who focused on hamlets and bastis where most children attend the local government school. A total of 1,362 households were part of this survey, with 60% of the sample coming from Dalit or Adivasi families. A full 98 percent of parents from SC/ST groups wanted schools to reopen without delay. In Latehar district of Jharkhand, the survey team was asked by higher caste group members, “If these people get educated, who will work in our fields?”
The survey results showed that smartphones were scarce and often needed by adults at work; when there were several children in the house, the smaller ones often did not have access to the phones. Only 9% of schoolchildren surveyed had their own phone. Many of the children who did have access to the phone found online classes harder to follow and more difficult to comprehend, given they had trouble concentrating.
Even when the children had the phone, some families reported that they did not have the money to pay for “data”. A majority of the households also reported connectivity troubles. Two thirds of urban parents whose children were able to access schooling online said their children appeared to have fallen behind, with reading and writing skills declining. Even children in grades 6-8 struggled to read a simple sentence in Hindi fluently. “To some extent, the dismal results reflect the poor quality of schooling prior to the lockdown,” the survey report,  titled "Locked Out: Emergency report on School Education", said.
Many of the children who did have access to the phone found online classes harder to follow and more difficult to comprehend
For those unable to access classes online, there was little evidence that children were doing any offline studying at all. “Children’s reading and writing abilities have been in freefall…” the report states. Among the better off in the sample, there were a few students taking private offline tuitions. “TV based education, for its part, seems to be a flop show,” the report notes. Only one percent of rural and 8% of urban children had seen these broadcasts.
What the survey found remarkable was the length to which some teachers had gone to continue classes – some of them were meeting children in small groups, holding classes at their homes or elsewhere. Some teachers were visiting children at home. These were small gestures, unable to make up for the vast lacunae in the whole education system during lockdown.
Twenty six percent of the sample were children who had transferred to government school from a private school, after parents were reluctant to pay fees for online classes alone or had trouble meeting the fee-paying requirement. Some parents were still struggling to transfer their children, unable to get the required transfer certificate without paying the whole dues in fees.
Midday meals had been discontinued and grains were distributed to students; parents complained that they were not getting the full quota they were entitled to. Twenty percent of children in urban settings had not received either food or cash transfer during the lockdown.
“The fig leaf of online education masked the elephant of school exclusion for the best of 17 months. The fact that this monumental injustice remained virtually unquestioned for so long is a telling indictment of India’s exclusionary democracy,” the report notes.
---
*Freelance journalist based in Pune

Comments

TRENDING

Insider plot to kill Deendayal Upadhyay? What RSS pracharak Balraj Madhok said

By Shamsul Islam*  Balraj Madhok's died on May 2, 2016 ending an era of old guards of Hindutva politics. A senior RSS pracharak till his death was paid handsome tributes by the RSS leaders including PM Modi, himself a senior pracharak, for being a "stalwart leader of Jan Sangh. Balraj Madhok ji's ideological commitment was strong and clarity of thought immense. He was selflessly devoted to the nation and society. I had the good fortune of interacting with Balraj Madhok ji on many occasions". The RSS also issued a formal condolence message signed by the Supremo Mohan Bhagwat on behalf of all swayamsevaks, referring to his contribution of commitment to nation and society. He was a leading RSS pracharak on whom his organization relied for initiating prominent Hindutva projects. But today nobody in the RSS-BJP top hierarchy remembers/talks about Madhok as he was an insider chronicler of the immense degeneration which was spreading as an epidemic in the high echelons of th

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview  story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded  reaction  in the form of a  link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Modi govt intimidating US citizens critical of abuses in India: NY Christian group to Biden

Counterview Desk  the New York Council of Churches for its release of an open letter calling on the Biden administration to “speak out forcefully” against rising Hindu extremist violence targeting Christians and other minorities in India. In the letter addressed to President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other major elected officials, the NY Council of Churches expressed "grave concern regarding escalating anti-Christian violence" throughout India, particularly in Manipur, where predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribals have faced hundreds of violent attacks on their villages, churches, and homes at the hands of predominantly Hindu Meitei mobs.

Green revolution "not sustainable", Bt cotton a failure in India: MS Swaminathan

MS Swaminathan Counterview Desk In a recent paper in the journal “Current Science”, distinguished scientist PC Kesaven and his colleague MS Swaminathan, widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution, have argued that Bt insecticidal cotton, widely regarded as the continuation of the Green Revolution, has been a failure in India and has not provided livelihood security for mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers. Sharply taking on Green Revolution, the authors say, it has not been sustainable largely because of adverse environmental and social impacts, insisting on the need to move away from the simplistic output-yield paradigm that dominates much thinking. Seeking to address the concerns about local food security and sovereignty as well as on-farm and off-farm social and ecological issues associated with the Green Revolution, they argue in favour of what they call sustainable ‘Evergreen Revolution’, based on a ‘systems approach’ and ‘ecoagriculture’. Pointing ou

Link India's 'deteriorating' religious conditions with trade relations: US policymakers told

By Our Representative  Commissioners on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) raised concerns about the “sophisticated, systematic persecution” of religious minorities by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a hearing on India in Washington DC.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah*   The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual. 

Why is green revolution harmful for nutrition, food safety, environment, climate change

By Bharat Dogra*  A lie repeated a hundred times will not turn a lie into a truth. The big media should realize this and stop perpetuating the lie of the green revolution saving India from hunger, long after the world has awakened to the reality of how harmful the green revolution has been from the point of nutrition, food safety, environment and climate change.

Alarming Odisha arrests, 'illegal' detentions ahead of Vedanta bauxite public hearing

Counterview Desk  More than 80 lawyers, legal academics and researchers have written to the Governor of Odisha raising concerns about the “alarming arrests and illegal detentions” of about two dozen persons from Rayagada district in Odisha in anticipation of the upcoming public hearing for the Sijimali bauxite mine proposed by M/s Vedanta Ltd.