Education during pandemic: Blow after blow for students
What happened to school- going children like the idiom what happened to the man who fell from the tree and got gored by the bull. For this entire week, secondary school principals, teachers, non- academic employees and external staff across the country have stopped online teaching, condemning the ham-handed action that subjected their union Secretary and other activists to mandatory quarantine after being arrested, and despite being granted bail for protesting against a proposed bill in Parliament and also demanding full vaccinations before schools reopen.
There is a gathering storm of protests countrywide. A general strike is being touted in some quarters.
Not all children have the necessary facilities or means for online learning during prolonged curfews, lockdowns and indefinite closure of schools. The media have repeatedly highlighted pictures of children on rooftops or trees trying to access signals. The digital divide sows a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots. A computer literacy survey reveals the stark facts: only 22.2% of households in Sri Lanka own a desktop or laptop computer. Around 1.67 million (7.8 per 100 people) are fixed internet subscribers while approximately 34.11% of the entire population had internet access in 2019.
When the previous Government wanted to give school kids laptops and greater Wi-Fi access, the then Opposition (now in Government) derided the project saying to give schools top "lats" (toilets) not laptops. Accessing smartphones for online learning in virtual classrooms posed difficulties for financially hard pressed parents as these don't come cheap.
A survey carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in September last year titled "Online Learning in Sri Lanka; Higher Education Institutions during the COVID-19 Pandemic" stressed that providing laptops and uninterrupted, affordable, high-speed internet access, particularly for students in poor households or remote areas, is crucial to ensuring equal access to tertiary education. It didn't need the ADB to say that. That was a given situation even pre- COVID which the then Opposition debunked.
The African continent is surging ahead with a UNICEF and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) partnered project to have internet connectivity of all schools around the world by 2030. Is Sri Lanka on board? Rwanda is an example to look at. Ravaged not so long ago by ethnic strife far worse than Sri Lanka has ever experienced, it has reportedly launched its own satellite to provide internet access to schools as an investment for the future.
Certainly, these virtual ' smart classrooms' will never be a substitute to traditional schooling. Children need to mix with peers, make friends for a lifetime and engage in sports and outdoor activities to become rounded persons -- not spend their days glued to a screen thoroughly unfit to face the real world. But the Government has botched the school system making a bad situation due to the pandemic worse by antagonising teachers. Parents and children are not likely to take their side. They will urgently need a course correction if the situation is not to worsen.