Apprehensions regarding learning losses due to long disruptions including covid-19 pandemic have come true in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the assessment by the Jammu and Kashmir State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), average performance of students has declined among the students of Class-III, Class-V and Class-VIII in comparison to NAS-2017.
As per survey of 2021, SCERT has said that the learning gaps have widened due to Covid-19 lockdown and school closure.
According to it, differences in the learning levels among the students of a same class have increased and 57 percent of the students have scored less than 50 percent in the J&K Assessment Survey 2021.
The findings of the survey should guide education policy, planning and implementation at J&K, district and classroom levels for improving learning levels of students and bringing about qualitative improvements.
The teachers and institutions are certainly confronted with a formidable challenge. The prolonged closure of schools have interrupted children’s learning and also eaten away at their foundational skills and abilities. Time lost cannot be regained but teachers are left with an extraordinary task to make good as regards learning deficits in reading, writing and comprehension in primary school. There are apprehensions that these learning losses may stunt education at higher levels.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the education system has been severely detrimental and it stands proven by Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for rural India earlier also.
The survey had shown that the percentage of children enrolled in government schools rose from 64.3% in 2018 to 65.8% in 2020, dramatically going up to 70.3% in 2021.
On the contrary, the enrolment rate in private schools declined from 28.8% in 2020 to 24.4% last year as per the survey which was conducted over the telephone and covering 76,706 households in 17,184 villages.
The percentage of rural children who were not enrolled in school doubled during the pandemic, with Government schools seeing an increase in enrolment at the expense of private schools, according to the report. Over a third of children enrolled in Classes 1 and 2 have never attended school in person until recently.
The most disturbing aspect of the report was that the young students, those just entering the formal education stream, have been left most vulnerable.
The immediate short-term step is to get on a back-to-basics revision programme across schools and classes. All stakeholders must come together to minimize loss of learning.