Riyaz Bhat
Srinagar, Aug 6: In north Kashmir’s Bandipora district, less than thirty per cent students of government-run-schools are attending virtual classes following the closure of Schools in view of COVID-19 pandemic.
In the district, out of a total number of 520 schools, only 414 are linked to virtual setup.
The official figures available with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) revealed that nearly 70 per cent of students in the district were relying on onscreen classes, community schooling and home based assignments.
The district has a total enrolment of 46,337 students from 1st standard to 12th standard out of which only 14,000 students are getting the education through virtual classes in the ongoing pandemic.
According to the official figures, there are 3456 teachers, lecturers and masters in the district out of which nearly 2300 have been involved in the virtual class setup.
The official figures revealed that on Wednesday, a total of 23 percent students in the district attended virtual classes while the top officials said that most of the students lack online gadgets and tools and rely on community schooling or onscreen classes.
Of the 23 per cent students who attended virtual classes a day before include 4882 students attended the classes’ via online platform, 3167 via video conferencing and 2989 students attended the class via voice conference calls.
Chief Education Officer (CEO) Bandipora, Javid Iqbal told KNO that the figures of those students don’t remain static on a daily basis.
“Yesterday more than 11,000 students attended virtual classes and on Thursday more than 14,000 students attended the classes. The number of students attending the virtual classes keeps on changing on a daily basis,” he said.
“There are only two spots in the Gurez zone wherein internet connectivity is available and for those areas, we are focusing on community classes. We don’t have any option there except holding community classes,” Iqbal said.
“In Tulail area of Gurez, almost every area is cut off from the internet. In this area, we have nearly 80 schools and in the zone we have a total of nearly 99 schools,” he said—(KNO)
