Return To Classroom

Many states, including Haryana, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana among others, opened schools on February 1 following the third wave of Covid-19. The state governments had shuttered the schools because of the spike of Omicron cases in India. As many as 247 million students enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in India have been touched by the pandemic.

In addition, before the Covid-19 problem had started, almost six million boys and girls were not attending school. Since just one in every four children has access to digital devices and internet connectivity, online education is not an option for everyone. Prior to COVID, only 24 per cent of Indian families had access to the internet, and there are significant gender and rural-urban divides.

According to UNICEF globally, 214 million pre-primary to upper secondary education students in 23 countries missed at least three-quarters of classroom instruction time. Primary school students constitute the majority of the world’s schoolchildren, so they are also the majority among those who missed at least three-quarters of classroom instruction (105 million), followed by lower secondary school students (53 million). Among these 214 million students, 78 per cent missed almost all in-person classroom instruction time. For the purposes of this report, a country is said to have missed 'almost all' in-person instruction time if between March 11, 2020 and February 2, 2021 the country had (i) 10 or fewer fully open school days and (ii) 12 or fewer partially open days. Globally, 168 million students in 14 countries missed all in-person classroom instruction since March, 2020. Brazil, Bangladesh, Mexico and the Philippines have the largest number of students impacted by these full school closures.

UNICEF, UNESCO, UNHCR, World Bank and World Food Programme developed a Global Framework for Reopening Schools which was adapted to the Indian context. The Ministry of Education has finalised guidelines, drafted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), for safe school re-opening with emphasis on promoting regular handwashing and safe hygiene practices of students, teachers and other school staff and sanitisation of schools, with adequate supplies and facilities as well as physical distancing strategies.