Akangjungla
By now, the schools closure and shifting traditional classrooms to digital platforms has made it apparent that it is not only increasing learning inequality among children, but leaving a large number of them out of school and adversely affecting the school teachers, management and families.
Over the last few days, the All Nagaland Private Schools’ Association (ANPSA) has spoken out loud of the several challenges the private schools in particular are faced with, due to shutting down of schools following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Association, on July 11 reported of a sharp decline of approximate 20% students and above in almost all private schools since the pandemic started, which “must be seriously noted.” On criticism about the fees collected by private schools, it has reasoned, “…how will the managements of private schools pay reasonable salaries to the private teachers as compared to the government teachers?” These grievances reached the office of the Chief Minister of Nagaland on July 14.
The budgetary aspects of the school management and families is a big part of the challenge emerging from the recent reports which The Morung Express has also published in detail on July 14 and 15, 2021 issues. The case is not different for the State run schools as well. The Department of School Education, Government of Nagaland has shared its finding on the ‘moderate increase in the dropout rate of students during the year 2020. The Morung Express July 5, 2021 editorial highlights some important aspects on this.
Right now, the issues highlighted by the All Nagaland Private Schools’ Association and the Department of School Education, Government of Nagaland are just the immediate ones and the situation is still very dire. Short-term policy measures can be implemented to address some of the concerns; however, for Nagaland to walk on the path of education recovery must not settle for measures limited to just addressing issues arising now but it should be long term and should go beyond this pandemic.
Though at the moment, the talk is mostly around the challenges and negative events, this pandemic has sparked an overdue discussion on the educational system in Nagaland. Considered as the ‘largest disruption to education in history,’ no one was prepared for this situation, neither the government nor the schools anywhere in the world. The abrupt transitions of the situation forced all the parties involved in the field of education to build unfamiliar learning systems almost instantly. With no guarantee of when the world will reclaim the “normal”, stakeholders must start a process to weigh the cost of the pandemic on education with the objective to reverse the learning losses and to mitigate the impact of school shutting down, not just on students but also on teachers, management and families.
The impact of the pandemic on education is multidimensional. Therefore, it is crucial to be inclusive in the approach and start talking about the effect, impact, consequences and the road to recovery from this catastrophe.
Any education recovery policy or measure should ensure that it not only brings proposal for recover from the pandemic but focus on the greater need to build human capacity and create contextual models of education system. Even so, it requires new imagination and a new breed of leaders, perhaps, this is the opportunity for Nagaland to reform the education system, a system which ensures that every child in Nagaland have an equal opportunity to access quality education; bring innovation to the syllabus with the aim to build skilled human resource; and teach values that can counter the increasing imbalance in the societies.
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