Parents fret as e-classes create learning gaps among students

BHUBANESWAR: It was an embarrassing moment for Manoj Swain, an IT professional, when his four-year-old son’s class teacher, during an online class, complained that the boy regularly skips his homework. The teacher asked Swain to give personal attention to his studies and meet her at the school. “I never thought that my son’s learning abilities will reduce so much. This happened owing to the pandemic as children are not attending offline classes. Only a couple of hours of online classes are enough for kids. With both working, parents hardly get time to oversee their kids’ studies and this leads to such problems,” said Swain. The government should consider resuming offline classes for all in schools, he added.
Increasing learning gaps among kids due to prolonged closure of schools has become a major concern for parents and teachers. Reading and writing abilities of students, especially at primary level, have gone down significantly.
“We can feel the decline in students’ learning abilities as their writing speed and the skill to learn new subjects have been affected in the absence of direct interaction with teachers. Many of them were very good in studies before the pandemic struck,” said Mrinalini Banerjee, an English teacher of a private school here.
Teachers said students can hardly concentrate on tutor’s instructions during online classes. Younger students often remain busy in other things while classes are on. “Due to poor internet connectivity, teachers mostly ask students to switch off the video option and keep the audio on. As a result, they cannot learn the way they should,” said Himanshu Sekhar Panda, who teaches mathematics at a city school. “Many class-10 students fail to solve simple multiplication and division problems. It will take a long time to bring these students back to their actual standards,” he added.
With the half-yearly examination in many schools scheduled before the puja vacations, teachers are in a hurry to complete the syllabus. “Teachers should first clear the doubts of students instead of focusing on completing the syllabus for the exam,” said Silpa Mohanty, a parent.
Inspired By