Education system during this pandemic and its future

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the whole world to its core and with its severe impact it has affected several lives of people both physically and mentally. Apart from the effects on the economy, industries and businesses, one of the major impact is on the education system.

The Governments all over the world and even in India most of the educational institutions have been shut down to contain the spread of COVID-19. As a result, the studies and lives of learners ranging from pre-schoolers to post graduate students have been affected in many possible ways, one could imagine.

For our better understanding lets divide the students into three groups — students who go to school, students who do not i.e. students in various colleges or universities completing their post or under-grad degrees and students who are just about to leave school or colleges.

The first group i.e. the school-going children is the most affected in the education sector. Children at this tender age are like wet clay, they must be shaped with a steady hand so that they grow out to be perfect. The experiences they encounter with at their stage with their classmates or teachers help in their mind and overall development of their personality which cannot be achieved through E-learning.

This online learning is playing great part at this time of crisis but as a coin has two sides same way e-learning too. Students studying in urban private schools are continuing their studies through online mode because of the knowledge and resources available to the them, their teachers and institutions but those who don’t go to such schools, who don’t have access to such kind of education for them it is a complete stop in the education. These are the children who go to government schools or shall I say most of them who are forced to go to schools by their parents because they get a mid-day meal. Since because of the lockdown these parents living in rural areas have no work to do will force their children to help them as soon as the lockdown lifts, thereby again raising the drop-out rate. Not only the lockdown affects the parents in the rural areas but also in urban areas where both the parents are generally working. Those having kids in pre-schools or generally below the age of 10 or 11 require help from their parents in using these digital gadgets and supervision while studying, making tough for their parents to handle house and even work.

Teachers are also having a hard time during the lockdown. Minority of the teachers who have proper infrastructure and resources and knowledge to use them are continuing well in teaching to students who too have access to these. But there are majority of the cases where the students have tech and resources ready to learn but the teachers do not sufficient knowledge on how to use them also vice versa i.e. when the students do not have enough resources where on the other hand teachers have.

Now the second group i.e. students in colleges or universities are in an unclear or a confused state regarding their education results because some of their exams were cancelled while some couldn’t complete theirs (and even online examinations are not possible) whether to which step they should take and a lot of other queries regarding their future or career but they have some time as compared to the third group.

The third group consist of students that are just about to graduate from college or about to leave schools, because of the issue related to their educational results they are in jeopardy regarding the next phase of their life. Without their results they have no idea as to where they will be going to college, or further studies or where are they are going to work.

No doubt that this crisis has had such a terrible impact on the Educational institutions, teachers, students and the whole of education system in numerous ways we cannot even imagine, but it is nothing compared to the numerous valuable lives lost due to this calamity.