Mushtaq Bhat,
The Lockdown in India to restrict the spread of Coronavirus has created an end number of problems in India, But It has badly affected the education of Kashmir students. The lockdown is not novel in Kashmir, Before this Pandemic lockdown was announced, Kashmir schools were barely opened in February after remaining closed for nearly seven months followed by the government’s decision to read down Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status on 5 August last year. These subsequent lockdowns have taken a heavy toll in the education sector in Kashmir.
As India begins reporting its initial cases of Coronavirus, the administration immediately ordered the closure of educational institutions to stop the spread of infection. As a result, the move increased educational inequalities and learning gaps. One couldn’t deny the role of teachers in these hardships and challenging time especially the teachers of Jammu and Kashmir. They played a multifaceted role in imparting hybrid education with low-speed internet facilities. But all these efforts aren’t enough to equate the absence of classroom teaching and other curriculum activities.
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, and 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 the lockdown of schools.
If we will talk of elementary education which is crucial in the foundation of a 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.
This problem can be effectively addressed by incorporating a remedial education dimension into the syllabus and pedagogy. This also requires an individual assessment, segregation of groups.
Moreover, policymakers need to design a plan rather than a strategy to address this grave issue.
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