In early March, as India began reporting its initial coronavirus cases, most states ordered schools to close to stop the spread of the infection. According to a UNESCO estimate, nearly 321 million Indian children were asked to stay home. Ten weeks later, they remain away from classrooms and have been advised online or distance learning. But in a country with already dismal learning levels and low internet use, how many children can actually stop the lockdown from setting their learning back?
The Annual Status of Education Report, released by nonprofit Pratham, offers some disturbing answers. In 2018, just 50 percent rural children in Class 5 could read a Class 2 level text, and only 28 percent could do division problems, the survey found. The data showed that the states with poorer learning were also the ones where students had lesser academic support at home that they would need during the lockdown, such as educated and computer-literate family members. Worse, dropout rates in poor-learning states also tend to be high.
In Jharkhand for instance, only 34 percent of Class 5 rural children could meet the bar for reading – the lowest in the country. Other parameters were also low – only 43 percent of mothers and 67 percent of fathers had been to school, just 11 percent of the families had a computer-literate member, and only 4 percent were found to have some reading material at home during the survey.
The other requirement for distance learning – the internet – is still out of bounds. According to the National Sample Survey education report, just 20 percent Indians above the age of 5 could use the internet, and only 24 percent families had the facility. The trends vary across states, and are even worse for rural areas.