'By year end, many kids will be thrown out of education system'

According to a study, mentioned in the report, 37 per cent students had just eight to 12 hours of electricity supply. Representation pic

A report published this week by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), analysing the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the state of education in Maharashtra, indicated that digital classrooms and compulsory examinations for final year college students, were doing more harm than good for the young student community.

Titled, Broken Slates and Blank Screens: Education Under Lockdown, the 48-page report has been authored by educationist, filmmaker and member of PUCL, Simantni Dhuru, with the help of fellow member and Bombay HC advocate Lara Jesani, Sandhya Gokhale, John D'Souza and Mihir Desai. Among the many things it discusses how the lockdown has had severe implications on the rights of children and the youth.

According to a study mentioned in the report, only 60 per cent households of students had laptops and desktops, while 37 per cent students had just eight to 12 hours of electricity supply. Only 49 per cent had Internet access, indicating a deep digital divide.

Simantni Dhuru, author of the report

The report said that "the reflection of disadvantage was even more evident" with mobile phones being the main source of Internet. Limitations on daily data availability, and sharing of devices within family members, were some of the issues that students have been facing. "Most important was that being adult students in graduate and post-graduate programmes, the home environment are the least conducive with many members of the family confined to a small space, the likely conflicts due to adjustment issues, the lack of privacy to study, and the demands on them for household labour," the report observed.

Speaking with mid-day, Dhuru mentioned three key points in the report published by PUCL - first, lack of equitable access to education; next, collapse of systems that provide nutrition, which form an intrinsic part of RTE and lastly, commercialisation and privatisation pushed heavily by using the pandemic as an excuse i.e. no transparency or people's participation, which is an essential component in implementation of the RTE Act. When asked whether the fault lines had been created by the state or Centre, she said, "Historically, by both. But in COVID-19 times, the state is not able to plan and function in an independent manner as many pro-poor, reasonable acts and decisions of the state are overturned by the Centre or by courts." Dhuru said that because the right to education is not "equal for all" and because "we have a multi-layered education system", the education sector as a whole "lacks inner resilience." She said, "If it was a reasonably well functioning system with different sections of the society having common interests, it would not have collapsed, but the pandemic has affected education of children/youth of different sections in different ways leaving them to fight their own battles. The poor are, as always, the worst affected."

Jesani said the COVID-19 lockdown had highlighted the inequality in access and quality of education available to the poor as compared to the rich. "Without smart devices, even if online learning is initiated, poor students cannot avail of these facilities. There is a huge number of dropouts already being reported and by the year end, many students will be thrown out of the education system."

Regarding the controversial and upcoming final year exams for students in Maharashtra, she said, "Even with such a high spread of the virus, UGC has insisted on final year exams being held, and even the Supreme Court backed this decision. It has been reported that students who attended entrance exams in Kerala and Karnataka contracted COVID-19, and in the current situation, where our country is almost at one lakh cases per day mark, it is nothing short of pushing students towards disease and health risk."

Government schools a 'non-starter'

In Maharashtra's context, the report noted that the government schools in the state were a "non-starter." It stated that while the state had a total of 66,946 government schools, as against a total number of 37,360 private schools, the figures of enrolment were inversely proportional. "Despite the spread of government schools across wider geographies the enrolment in government schools is 57,18,528 as against the enrolment in private schools of 1,01,82,972 - almost 50 per cent less."

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