Monitoring students under ‘school at home’ a challenge for govt schools

admin August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 0 Comments govt school, monitoring students, online classes, private schools, school at home

MADURAI: With textbooks being distributed and video lessons for Classes I to XII made available via ‘Kalvi Tholaikatchi’ programmes on TV and online, government school students are slowly beginning to adapt to the new norm of ‘School at home’ or ‘Veettupalli’. However, unlike online classes by aided and private schools, lack of proper routine and monitoring by teachers makes schooling from home a huge challenge for government schools.

“Besides ‘Kalvi Tholaikatchi’ TV programmes for Class I to X and video lessons on laptops for Class XI and XII, students should learn and study from their textbooks,” said Madurai district chief educational officer (CEO), R Swaminathan, speaking to TOI. Government school headmasters have created WhatsApp groups for students separately for each class to share information on digital learning and check on students.

“The problem is that in my school of 200 students, only 70 have access to WhatsApp. But, we are trying to ensure that at least those students are learning. Even then, we cannot monitor how the students are learning from home and if they are watching the video lessons,” said the headmaster of a government middle school. Government school teachers said that children, especially when their families are also suffering due to pandemic, would not be able to focus on learning in the absence of a routine or monitoring system.

“Through WhatsApp and phone calls, we are trying to keep reminding students to focus on studying. We are able to reach around 70% of students. For higher classes, we are giving short assignments which students complete by writing on paper, click photos and send to us. But, again, we are not able involve each and every student,” said the headmaster of a government higher secondary school. Meanwhile, the CEO said that further, as an initiative by the district, question papers are also being prepared for higher secondary school students, which will be shared through WhatsApp for students to answer and submit.