Parents somehow bought phones for kids’ studies: Study

LUCKNOW : The Covid-19 pandemic, subsequent lockdowns, curbs and the ensuing online education of students in the past one and a half years demonstrated one thing amply well: no gadgets, no education. Those with laptops and smartphones sailed through studies but wards of economically weaker sections (EWS) enrolled in private schools of Uttar Pradesh under right to education (RTE) Act, had a tough time, as per a survey.

However, it also found that despite loss of income, many parents from economically weaker sections somehow bought smartphones so that their wards could attend online classes.

According to the survey conducted by RightWalk Foundation, an NGO working for social issues, out of 375 randomly selected students of 13 districts enrolled under RTE, almost half had no access to online classes. The survey found that this happened because either the school lacked resources to provide online classes or the students had no access to smart devices, including a smartphone.

To note, most education institutes moved to online classes when the lockdown was imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The survey, which was conducted from January to March 2021, found that 68% students had access to at least one electronic device which enabled them to attend online classes while 32% students had no smartphones at their disposal.

There were 86% private schools that provided some form of online classes for their students, while 14% did not have the resources to do so.

Factoring in the schools providing online classes, 58% of these RTE students had access to online classes.

The surveyors also interacted with the parents of these students.

They found that parents of economically weaker sections invested in a smartphone despite losing their income sources, to ensure that their kids enrolled in private schools under RTE did not miss out on studies.

The survey found 60% people who had bought a smartphone during lockdown to cater to the educational needs of their children. In fact, the parents borrowed money to buy these phones.

During lockdown, the data usage by EWS families shot up, with over 43% families consuming more than 2 GB data per day.

In some cases, schools also helped the parents with data recharges to enable children to attend online classes.

Technical issues like poor network forced schools to make additional efforts to run classes for RTE kids over WhatsApp.

As many as 80% of these students received daily instructions from schools, 12% received them four times and 8% twice a week.

Talking about the study, Samina Bano, founder and CEO of RightWalk said , “The study gave us a clearer picture of the struggles EWS households had to face on a daily basis and how a more holistic approach was needed to provide equal access to education to children from underprivileged communities and disadvantaged groups. Getting them to school was just opening the gates to education, but to sustain them in schools required an altogether different set of resources.”

Bano said “However, it is noteworthy that approximately 58% of the students were able to access online classes on account of their parents’ propensity to invest in educational infrastructure despite income loss, as shown in another research by RightWalk in collaboration with Prof Anuj Kumar from the University of Florida and Prof Sharique Hasan from Duke University, USA.”