#45 A Pandemic Lesson For The Education System
Banning online classes is a misguided move. Policymakers need to design a range of options linked to the risk perceptions of the parents
This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?
Welcome to the mid-week edition in which we write essays on a public policy theme. The usual public policy review comes out on weekends.
— Raghu Sanjaylal Jaitley
“Back to school”.
This is the time of the year when brands like Bata and ITC Classmate put out ads with this line. But this year is different.
Schools haven’t opened yet. The Unlock India 1.0 circular from the union government suggested they might open in July. But the HRD minister now thinks it could be after August. The lockdown coincided with the year-ending examinations and summer vacations for most schools. Schools cancelled the examinations and closed the academic year. This meant the impact of lockdown on school education was minimal. This lulled us into not thinking deeply about the problem of education during a lockdown.
The problem of schools staying shut
For most parents, the reality of schools not opening is dawning now. Schools in cities used the summer break to equip themselves with online learning content and video platforms. Many of them have started with online classes in the new session. But things haven’t been easy. Karnataka became the first state to ban online classes till Grade 5 after receiving multiple complaints from parents. Soon a rival group of parents emerged opposing the ban. Similar rumblings are heard from other states like Maharashtra and MP too.
On the other hand, schools in small towns and villages don’t have the means to go digital. These schools are shut despite low case infections in these locations. The kids are at home and losing school time. The second-order impact is also showing up. Working parents are finding it difficult to resume office because kids are at home. Full-time domestic help to look after them is either expensive or difficult to find because migrants have fled the city. In rural areas, schools served mid-day meals to children. No school has meant no mid-day meals in many states.
When will schools open? There are two factors driving this decision among the policymakers. First, the extent of spread of the pandemic. The July or August timelines were based on the expectation things will be under control by then. Second, the concerns of the parents in sending their kids to schools. Surveys done by schools suggest Indian parents place schools among the last public spaces that should be opened. The trend of COVID-19 in India suggests a peak and a subsequent decline could be 4-6 months away. There is a real possibility of an entire academic year washed away because of the pandemic. A similar possibility looms in the higher education space too. But let’s keep our focus on schools for now.
Limitations of online schooling
There’s a belief online schooling will bridge the gap in the interim. So, is going online the universal solution for schools? There are five challenges here:
Access: India has over 500 million internet users but 73% of them access it through mobile phones. In most households, it is one phone with a data connection that’s usually with one of the parents. PC or tablet penetration which is the relevant metric of access for this is at 3% of total households.
Affordability: Even in urban areas where the internet penetration is high, a typical household with two kids at school will need two PCs or tablet devices along with two study desks. This is a luxury for most Indian parents.
Learning outcomes: The success of K-12 EdTech players like Byju’s and Vedantu has been in positioning themselves as a substitute for the widespread practice of private tuition. This growth came on the back of parents’ anxiety about lack of time to teach them at home, quality of teaching at school and a high decibel marketing campaign by these players. The learning outcomes of such online platforms are not clear yet even when they are used to supplement school education. ‘Online-only’ school education is a different ball game. Learning is a social experience. The lack of school environment and the physical presence of teachers and students will have an impact on learning outcomes.
Device fatigue: It is simply not feasible to have 5-6 hours of device-based learning every day. There will be challenges to wean kids away from devices in non-school hours, more so, when outdoor activities are already restricted because of the pandemic.
Language constraints and teacher readiness: The online content that’s readily available for most subjects is in English. It will take time to create quality online content in Indian languages. Also, teachers need training to manage online classes. Most teachers have found running online classes more stressful than the usual classes.
How should we think about this?
What do we do? If we are hit by a couple of waves, we might lose the year. And if the vaccine doesn’t cover most of India by same time next year, there’s a danger of losing the next year too. These may be low probability events, but we should prepare for them. A full academic year lost is quite significant in a country like ours. Losing two can’t be an option. The cascading impact on higher education, employment, teachers, school staff and mental health of students and parents will be huge. We have devoted a lot of time on the health and economic impact of the pandemic. There is a need to elevate the risk in school education in policy discussions and plan a coherent response keeping in mind the possible scenarios.
There are three objectives of school education:
Attaining knowledge: Learning about a subject through reading, listening and practising its techniques
Instilling curiosity: Schools and teachers open the minds of students to a wider enquiry of the world around them. This happens through the interactions, questions and discussions between students and teachers in classrooms
Developing social skills: Classrooms are a microcosm of society. Students learn to build friendships, share with others, understand a different point of view and learn to speak for themselves.
A good school helps parents by optimising for all three objectives. The pandemic has meant parents and schools will have to make trade-offs between these because all of them aren’t possible or affordable. Different parents will have different objectives to optimise at this time. It is important for policymakers to provide options that can cover these objectives than take a single solution approach.
We should design solution options in a way that allows parents with differing risk perceptions to choose what’s best for them and their kids.
Potential policy options
Avoid the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach: We should learn from our lockdown experience. A single national or state-wide policy for closing of schools isn’t a great idea. There are over 70 per cent wards or panchayats at this time that are COVID free. Barring 25-30 urban clusters, students are usually sourced from within the same ward or panchayat where the schools are located. So, the risk of movement between ward is not high in these green wards. We should be opening up schools in these locations with the usual guidelines applicable to workplaces. To reduce risk, the schools can run two 3-hour shifts to avoid crowding and to maintain social distancing norms. There’s evidence now that children are less susceptible to the virus. Also, the teachers in most schools in India are aged below 45 which puts them in a relatively safe category. The state governments can run campaigns to dispel concerns parents have about sending kids to schools. These schools should start immediately.
Enabling students and parents: Banning online school should not be an option. Let schools provide content and ‘live’ classes. Attending them can be left to the discretion of parents especially for students till Grade 5. State governments can take steps to address the access and affordability challenges of remote learning in urban clusters. These could include
Using state-run TV channels to broadcast classes 24X7 in local languages and in English for different subjects and grades with repeat telecasts.
Providing vouchers that subsidize the purchase of tablet devices: As an example, a scheme where each household that has kids in secondary school (above Grade 5) gets a maximum of two vouchers of Rs. 10,000 each which can be redeemed to purchase a tablet device with the balance being paid by the parents. The state government then pays out the voucher value to the retailer. The co-pay option will reduce the risk of abuse of this scheme. This will be a one-time cost of Rs. 20,000 crores assuming 2 crores tablets are bought across all the states (outside of the 70 per cent green zones).
National teacher volunteer mission: Think of this as an urban MGNREGA plan. We could have the problem of white-collar urban unemployment for the next couple of years given the challenges of the economy. In any case, we had this problem before the pandemic too. One idea to consider is a teaching volunteer mission where anyone who is a graduate can volunteer to the teaching mission. Based on their educational qualifications, experience, language capabilities and interest areas, they could enrol into a national database with their location details. All schools in these cities also enrol their professional teachers with details of subjects, teaching level and medium of instruction. Each teacher gets attached to 2-4 apprentices based on their experience. All volunteers and teachers will be paid a stipend for being on this mission.
Each big city can then be divided into ‘learning districts’ of 1 sq km each of inhabited area. A city like Bangalore will have about 500 of them. A large apartment complex of over 1000 houses or a group of apartment blocks could be a learning district. Parents are reluctant to send kids to schools that are far away from their homes and where they could come in contact with a lot of other kids from other parts of the city. But it is likely they will be comfortable sending their kids to a ‘common space’ within their ‘learning district’. This common space could be an existing school or community club houses. The professional teachers and their apprentices could choose to volunteer their time to conduct classes for their subjects and grades for a location of their choosing. A timetable can be provided on a public platform for each of these learning districts. Parents can send their children to these classes based on the timetable. The teachers and apprentices can take pictures of the classes conducted to authenticate their efforts.
The government pays a predefined rate per class to the teachers and apprentices from the National Teacher Volunteer Fund. Parents can also contribute to the fund on a voluntary basis. There’s no specific payment to be made for the classes. They are free. A rough calculation suggests about 2 million teacher volunteers working for Rs. 1 Lakh stipend p.a. will mean a spend of Rs. 20,000 crores annually. This is both a spend for a purpose and a stimulus. The voluntary contributions from parents will reduce this a bit. We have given a broad outline of the plan and there are details of this that can be worked out. The benefits of this plan are clear:
Option to have ‘live’ class experience for kids to learn from teachers and other students
Limited risks since the 1 sq km ‘learning district’ is like a bubble. The teachers and apprentices coming in can take the usual protective measures of temperature checks, masks and social distancing from students. Often they might be from the same bubble.
A real stimulus for educated youth and teachers who might see layoffs or salary cuts if schools don’t start regular classes
Parents who can afford will create similar ‘private network’ of teachers to provide a ‘live’ classroom experience to their kids (maybe, even for a group of kids within a community). The Teacher Volunteer Mission will replicate this at scale across the states with no obligation for parents to pay
How do these steps help?
First, almost 70 per cent of schools can open and continue with regular academic sessions. The tablet subsidy scheme and the free-to-air education channels allow students to access content remotely. Schools should be encouraged to get more content online and become digitally ready. Finally, there are three options for parents of students in Grade 6 and above. They could choose a full online model, a combination of online and ‘learning district’ model or even a full ‘learning district’ option. The apprentices will learn a real skill (teaching) with an experienced professional while being paid for it. The students acquire knowledge and also get a school-like experience without taking additional risks.
The possibility of two academic years being disrupted can’t be ruled out. Thinking through some of the options suggested here could help policymakers plan for the scenarios that might emerge.
HomeWork
Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters
[Article] A comprehensive study of Online teaching by a MIT Professor and his team that ends with a surprising and ‘deflating’ results
[Article] An op-ed in the Times of India calling for equalising the India Edtech story
[Interview] The irrepressible Prof. Scott Galloway on the future of universities