Lockdown amid Covid19 widening learning gaps

The Lockdown in India to confront the spread of Coronavirus has created a lasting image problems. It also caused an enormous impact at educational level. As India begins reporting its initial cases of Coronavirus, the administration immediately ordered the closure of educational institutions in order to stop the spread of infection. As a result the move increased educational inequalities & learning gaps. One couldn’t deny the role of teachers in these hardships & challenging time especially the Teachers of J&K Union Territory who played multifaceted role in imparting hybrid education with low speed internet. But all these efforts aren’t enough to equate the absence of school’s levelling influence. The inaccessibility of classrooms encouraged hybrid learning, thereby questioning the role of educational institutions. It is pertinent to mention that Children from lower-income families were already disadvantaged in educational terms, & now being at home rather than in school during the lockdown has created a vacuum of learning in them. learning gaps are compounding, which can be troublesome for students beginning to fall behind. The question of Lost Learning is based on a distorted view of education as the teaching of successive content. In this image, the grand book of learning would now be missing a few pages due to lockdown of schools. If we will talk of elementary education which is crucial & foundation of child’s future education. it is increasingly apparent that performance gaps by social class take root in the earliest years of children’s lives and fail to narrow in the years that follow. That is, children who start behind stay behind—they are rarely able to make up the lost ground. These learning gaps not only ruin the future of students but also shatter the dreams of many parents.
Lockdown in India has widened ‘Learning Gaps’ impacted future of children
This problem can be effectively addressed by incorporating a remedial education dimension into the syllabus & pedagogy. This also requires individual assessment, segregation of groups. Moreover, policymakers need to design a plan rather strategy to address this grave issue when these students return to schools bringing this additional disadvantage with them.
(The author is a freelancer. Views are his own) [email protected]