Fresh HRD guidelines out for online classes, screen time cut

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 14

Issuing guidelines for digital education, the Centre today capped screen time for students and teachers across categories. The decision will impact over 240 million children enrolled in schools that remain closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The school heads, as per the guidelines, should not expect teachers to be engaged in six to eight hours of online teaching in a day and should only look at two to three hours of online activities per day. Allow 10-15 minutes break between two consecutive classes for students to relax, the guidelines say.

Titled “PRAGYATA”, the HRD Ministry directions propose cap on the duration and number of online sessions a day for students from Class I to XII (see box). Broad directions to schools for digital education are to follow eight steps of online learning — plan, review, arrange, guide-talk, assign, track and appreciate.

The ministry also issued guidelines on education of children of migrant workers who had to shift to another place amid the pandemic. It asked the states and UTs not to strike off the names of children and instead show them as “migrated” or “temporarily unavailable”.

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