For the second consecutive year schools are shut but online teaching of government schools due to better regulation by the school education department is more prompt in government run schools than the private education institutions. While private schools have disengaged more than half of the teaching staff and reduced the salary of the staff for online teaching by almost 50%, the government is regulating online teaching of it’s own schools more effectively than the private educational institutions . While better regulation of online teaching has improved teaching in government schools, inability of the school education department to regulate the online teaching of private schools has created a divide in the system of online teaching. Though classes conducted on state run radio and TV channels besides some leading satellite news channels by the government is a welcome move but online teaching of private schools in absence of a better system of regulation is not effective enough to compensate the losses suffered by students due to suspension of physical attendance for the second consecutive year. While teachers’ absenteeism, political intervention, lack of basic infrastructure, and poor quality of education used to be the bigger grievances of people against the government run schools, the grievances of the people against the online teaching of private schools despite touching sky rocketing heights have gone unnoticed. Teaching learning process have deteriorated more in private educational institutions and less in government schools as teachers of government schools are sending links of daily class attendance in the WhatSapp groups of zonal, district and provincial heads of school education department as per the directive of the government but there no such mechanism for attendance of online teaching classes for teachers of private schools. Interestingly private schools charge full fee even for the online classes during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic for the second consecutive year and that too after reducing their staff by 50% and also slashing down the salaries of teachers for teaching classes by another 50%.
Creating accountability systems and appointing dedicated supervisory teams for regulating the online teaching of private schools is a way out and it is for the school education department to regulate online teaching of private educational institutions the way it regulates online teaching of it’s own schools so that there is no divided in online teaching system .
While full fee has not resulted in any improvement in the online teaching by private schools, the inability of the school education department to enforce a better system of regulation for online classes of private schools has reduced the efficacy and efficiency of online teaching of private schools. Inability of the school education department to regulate the quality of online teaching by private schools shows the failure of accountability system in private education sector. Creating accountability systems and appointing dedicated supervisory teams for regulating the online teaching of private schools is a way out and it is for the school education department to regulate online teaching of private educational institutions the way it regulates online teaching of it’s own schools so that there is no divided in online teaching system .
