The workload of teachers increases as children don’t know many basic concepts.
Workload on teachers has increased as there was a drastic decline in the learning of foundational skills.
Kiran, a primary school teacher said that Covid has impacted basic learning among students, especially among students in primary classes.“They don’t even know the basic concepts. We are needed to teach even fourth standard students basic single-digit addition and subtraction. Online education students use different apps and don’t concentrate on classes. We understand this when we teach them and in online classes, they don’t answer,” she added.
“This increased work added up to our existing work of teaching, assessing the students on a regular basis along with other administrative work,” said Arvind, another primary school teacher.
“Online education was not very effective because of which we need to work extra on small children for their reading and writing,”said Vijayalakshmi, principal of government public school.
The mode of teaching children online has impacted their learning pattern. “We had WhatsApp groups through which we provided the study material. This has benefited some children which are good at their basics but some students make mistakes. Parents who were interested in their children’s education taught them and there were some parents who were not bothered about their child’s learning,” said Radha, the principal of another public school.
The joint commissioner of the Karnataka Social Welfare department said that they haven’t planned anything yet to improve the foundational skills as they did not receive any instructions from the education department. “We are a social welfare department. We look after education in residential schools and hostels but we follow the guidelines of the education department. We haven’t received any such complaint from any residential schools we run. We provide all facilities to students in our schools.”
An official from the Karnataka Primary Education department of the said that theyare doing everything. “We have started many programs for improving education quality. We also introduced an alternate academic year and we are planning the academic year according to the competence of teachers so that students benefit,”she added.
Now as schools prefer online classes due to fear of a new variant of Covid-19, fears about decreasing foundational skills of students are resurfacing.
Anju, a parent whose son is in the third standard said, “We prefer online classes as a precautionary measure against Covid-19, but it is affecting my son’s studies. He doesn’t concentrate on classes and as mobile phones have become a necessity for education, children misuse them and they are gradually addicted to mobile and social media.”
Dr. Arvind Kakulte, a psychologist said,thatthe increased workload of teaching again affects the morale and confidence of teachers, especially young teachers as they doubt their abilities. “It also increases stress and deteriorates their performance,”he added.
Explaining the problems among children, he said that this is causing problems for students as their overall growth is disturbed. Some students are showing behavioural mal-adaptive problems along with self-esteem and confidence issues at a very young age.
The view of author (MS UTKARSHA MULEY) with various case study is well explained . The current situation of teachers are exactly the same mentioned in the article. I appreciate and congratulate you for this article.Thanks.