Only five out of 30 students of this village have smartphones

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, September 25

Government Middle School, Mundi Cholian in Lohian block, has a strength of 131 students and 30 of them are residents of Dhakka Basti, a village 3 km away from the school. Of these 30, only five students have smartphones.

The Punjab Achievement Survey (PAS) test was started on September 21 and most of the students belonging to this village couldn’t take online test on the first day. The village is situated near Sutlej River and most of the people are involved in menial jobs.

Head teacher of Government School, Mundi Cholian, Kulwinder Singh, being aware of the fact visited the village along with other teachers and ensured that every student took the test. This isn’t the story of this village only. Around 50 students in the school come from Madala Channa village and many of them are also without mobile phones. The head teacher had also gone to Madala Channa earlier this week

Since the beginning of the test, the teachers of the rural areas have been visiting the students who don’t have phones and are giving them their own mobiles to complete the test. The teachers have formed the groups where the students having the phone are helping others, and even the teachers are giving their own phones to the students so that they don’t suffer. “Students who come from such far off villages where people hardly have any access to technology, taking exams online is not a cakewalk,” the head teacher said.

He said when he had gone the first day, he had called the students at one place and made them sit at a distance and then monitored them while they took exams. “They were having trouble using technology, and we helped them,’ he informed. Deepak Prakash, head teacher of Government Primary School, Madala Channa, is also doing the same. A total of 84 students study in the school and 40 per cent of them don’t have smartphones. Prakash also informed that he visited every student’s house, so that everybody could take the exam.

“It is a painstaking task at this point, but I understand my duty and will work for the students. I, along with two other teachers, have been visiting the homes and helping each of them to login on their IDs, and taking exam,” he said.