12% students did not attend online classes during pandemic, says report

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 28

A report of the National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA) has indicated that 12 per cent students did not join online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic due to lack of internet. Meanwhile, 98.6 per cent respondents preferred offline classes.

The report “National level survey on learning loss in school education during the pandemic”, released by Kulbhushan Sharma, NISA president, here today noted divide in schools from the rural parts of India with four per cent of 61 per cent respondents saying they used other non-interactive platforms like YouTube and Doordarshan for study.

On stress level, it said 42.3 per cent of the total respondents reported that they went through stress and anxiety during pandemic.

Sharma said NISA assessed the learning loss amongst school students of third, fifth and eighth grade during the Covid-19 pandemic at the national level.

“The objective of the research is to understand and identify learning gaps that occurred in the pandemic,” Sharma added.

Mother tongue challenges in reading were observed in all the urban zones. The difficulty level is higher in respondents in writing (mother tongue) compared to reading across all grades and zones. Surprisingly, difficulty level in reading skills (English) in urban schools are found to be higher at an aggregate of 30 per cent across all zones with third and fifth grade reporting major challenges compared to eighth grade.

Grade three students have major challenges in mathematics with 44 per cent falling below Class I level (36 per cent) and Class II level (8 per cent).

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