The world’s longest lockdown of schools is likely to prove disastrous for the learning outcomes of over 100 million children. However the silver lining of the grim pandemic storm is that a small minority of education leaders have succeeded in devising creative responses, writes Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen The order of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre formalised on March 25, 2020 directing closure of campuses of all education institutions from preschools to university for over 15 months and counting, to prevent transmission of the deadly novel Coronavirus which has taken a toll of 4 million lives worldwide and 400,000 in India, has severely disrupted Indian education and inflicted as yet uncalculated damage to teaching-learning across the education continuum. Although all countries around the world except Sweden also shuttered their education institutions to safeguard children from being infected by this highly contagious virus, it is pertinent to note that the duration of India’s lockdown of 57 weeks is the longest worldwide, except for neighbouring Myanmar and Nepal. Reputed organisations such as Unesco and Unicef among others are issuing alarming reports of millions of children in India, deprived of Internet connectivity and digital learning devices, dropping out of schools and colleges and prematurely joining the workforce, being forced into early marriages, falling prey to child traffickers and prostitution. In the rarefied environs of Lutyens’ Delhi where the Central government is floundering in a sea of troubles, and after two years of masterly inactivity under Hindi pulp fiction writer Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, who was belatedly sacked in the Union cabinet reshuffle of July 7, and new education minister Dharmendra Pradhan is finding his bearings, there seems little concern that over 66 percent of India’s 260 million school children have not received any meaningful education for 16 months. Ditto in the education ministries of the country’s 28 state governments and nine Union territories (education is a concurrent subject of the Constitution) where the major preoccupation of education ministries seems to be slashing private school fees to placate the subsidies-addicted middle class and driving private schools struggling to provide online classes, into bankruptcy. In Shastri Bhavan (which houses the Union education ministry) and state governments, the assumption seems to be that by acts of God and through one-way lectures delivered by untrained teachers on television screens, children are learning enough to get by. The dominant sentiment is that political risk of children contracting the virus is too high and could cost ruling parties votes in future elections. Warnings by Unesco, Unicef and other reports that children trailing behind by a year or more in primary education are unlikely to recover lost ground and will suffer 10-15 percent income loss in adulthood, don’t seem to bother politicians or educrats. They have kept schools shut with scant respect for the advice of epidemiologists and academics who advocate cautious reopening of schools to protect the future careers and livelihoods of children. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (October 2020) of the nationally respected…
