By Devender Singh Aswal
Every man’s home, even if it has a thatched roof, is his citadel. A home is the sanctuary which provides us shelter, privacy, safety, security and joy unspeakable. Yet, prolonged confinement to one’s citadel curtails the most inherent and fundamental freedom to move freely, without which the right to life loses meaning and substance.
The home detention of children for almost two academic sessions due to the closure of schools has created “a shadow crisis for children”. Children, even those who played truant, long desperately to go to their schools and enjoy the full blooded-throbbing environment, and reclaim their lost freedoms.
UNICEF feels that worldwide, especially in underdeveloped countries, “beyond falling behind on their education, many children are missing out on school-based meals and routine vaccinations, experiencing social isolation and increased anxiety, and being exposed to abuse and violence”. In fact, school closures have led to dropouts, child labour and, possibly, in many societies “child marriage”. According to a UNICEF report, “Many parents have been unable to continue with their employment while balancing their children’s care and learning needs. Some have lost their jobs entirely, pushing their families into poverty and creating a deeper economic crisis.”
Globally, while remote learning became a lifeline for millions of schoolchildren, access to technology and the quality of the curriculum have been uneven even across communities and geographical locales. So, the UNICEF has urged governments, local authorities and school administrations to reopen schools as soon as possible and take all possible steps to mitigate the transmission of the virus there. UNICEF has stressed, though, that schools must abide with national and local guidelines, such as providing hand washing facilities and/or hand sanitisers; frequently cleaning of surfaces and shared objects; ensuring adequate and appropriate ventilation; keeping students and teachers in small groups that do not mix and observe other Covid appropriate precautions and conduct.
Schools were forced to close down in India in March 2020 ahead of the usual closing of the academic year. The pandemic forced schools across the country to move to online pedagogy and digital learning. Thanks to India’s prowess as a leader in IT, the fast-expanding National Optical Fibre Network and the expanding reach of other technological devices, students continued to learn. Online pedagogy and digital learning became the new normal.
However, the task of imparting teaching without attending classes physically was, and still continues to be, a daunting one as India has more than 240 million students and 8.5 million teachers across primary, upper-primary, secondary and senior-secondary stages, apart from students and teachers in higher institutions of learning. Formal learning has been disturbed for the past two academic sessions. The prolonged and continuing spell of the pandemic has made it imperative to blend traditional offline learning and e-learning so that both go together for greater reach and convenience, even after the pandemic is over.
Albeit online pedagogy and digital learning is praiseworthy, yet it fails to ensure universal access and equitable quality learning for all students due to various factors, such as unequal distribution of time of teachers, students having differential access to technological devices, want of appropriate space at home and lack of domestic support for learning in many cases. Despite the best of collective efforts by the Union and state governments, teachers, students and parents, the closure of schools has caused immeasurable and irretrievable loss of learning and adversely impacted the well-rounded development of students.
The most worrisome aspect has been that many children face anxiety, distress, depression and eyesight problems due to staring for long hours at digital devices, notwithstanding the guidelines issued by NCERT prescribing different time duration for online/digital learning for different group of classes.
There have been considerable dropouts due to job losses and the squeezed income of parents. There are a number of difficulties that range from downloading errors, issues with installation, login, audio and video problems, slow net speed, interruptions, digital inaccessibility and so on. Also, students find long online teaching monotonous and boring. The teachers too are overburdened, especially in private schools.
Students feel distressed due to the lack of community and the resuscitating ethos of a school, which is more than a physical infrastructure. Virtual home detention due to intermittent waves of the pandemic for almost two years have turned the sweet home into a tortuous place bereft of freedom of movement, playful interaction and joyful learning feasible only in an open school environment. Long confinement to homes, the despair of desolation, lack of physical activity and stimulating school environment, the accelerated stress of online and digital learning, inequitable home learning environment and joblessness all have adversely impacted the physical and mental development of children.
There is growing feeling among parents especially that the risk of Covid infection may be milder vis a vis the adverse consequences of further detention of children at home. Experts, based on empirical research and the waning impact and cases of Omicron, feel that schools need to open. Major developed countries fortified with vaccination
and well equipped healthcare system, where they believe the pandemic has peaked and now is on the decline, have lifted curbs and allowed schools and other public places to open but after keeping their plan B ready in case of any new wave.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a few days back in the House of Commons that restrictions “deployed to fight the latest wave of the COVID pandemic in England would be lifted from next week. People will no longer have to wear masks in closed spaces, work from home and prove vaccination to enter public spaces such as nightclubs”. Secondary school pupils are no longer required to wear face masks.
However, lifting of curbs and observation of Covid appropriate behaviour is a matter which requires conscientious decision after critical evaluation of the available data. Australia took a decision on January 13, 2022, to put in place a national framework to promote a consistent approach to the ongoing delivery of high-quality education for all students during the current pandemic.
The National Framework for Managing COVID-19 in Schools and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) aims to ensure all schools are open and are able to stay open with as little disruption as possible with tangible guidelines to be observed scrupulously.
States and Union Territories are responsible for drafting individual operational plans in consultation with relevant stakeholders and school and ECEC sectors. Similar examples abound across the world.
The pandemic situation varies from state to state and even within geographical locales in a state. But overall, there is a perceptible fall in new cases. Mindful of this and the milder nature of the Omicron variant, there are encouraging voices asking for the opening the schools. Making a strong argument for this, Dr Anurag Agrawal, Director of Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, is on record as saying that “the pandemic is now entering a stage where normal activities can resume with relatively small and not very difficult precautions”. He also said that “keeping children away from school had potential adverse impacts on their physical and mental development” and that, in his opinion, “it was a bigger problem in the current context than the risk of infection”.
Joyful learning and holistic development of each child are some of the key features of the National Education Policy 2020. This is feasible in an open and integrated school environment. There is a definitive need to reopen schools considering the decrease in cases, accelerated vaccination campaign, building of herd immunity and taking note of the tremendous mental stress on children due to long home confinement.
By current indications, most of the states, if decline in reported cases continues, may reopen schools by the middle of February. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, entrusted with core public health mandate and well equipped with world class institutions of excellence in the field of medical research and education, may take the lead and issue suitable advisories for states to open schools. After opening schools, states too would need to keep constant watch over the evolving situation on a daily basis with contingency plans considering the mutating nature of the virus.
The writer is ex Addl Secretary, Lok Sabha and a member of Delhi Bar Council. The views expressed are personal.