RTE’s Effects Go beyond Educational Strides, finds Survey. But Covid has not been kind.
“Online classes did not help my children in anyway. My youngest son, who is in class II, could read Hindi without assistance before the lockdown. But now he has forgotten most alphabets,” said Farzana, a mother of two, when we visited her home in Lavkush Nagar, an impoverished neighborhood in Lucknow. She added: “It is impossible to get children’s attention through a phone. I try my best to help them finish assignments and send them to teachers, but I can’t teach. I get little time to sit with them during online classes.”
Covid-19 has hit many sectors, but even as we are make a slow recovery education sector continues to suffer. Although online classes enabled the possibility of learning from home, they came with a set of infrastructural and accessibility challenges.
RightWalk foundation’s visit to Lavkush Nagar, where Right to Education [RTE 12.1.©] was painstakingly materialized, parents had a disappointing experience with online classes. RTE 12.1.© policy mandates reservation of 25% seats in entry-level class for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and disadvantaged group children in private schools to advocate for equality and social inclusion within classrooms.
RightWalk Foundation, with its more than six years of expertise in materializing (RTE) 12.1.© in Uttar Pradesh, conducted a survey on the impact of Covid on the education of vulnerable communities. A survey to assess the socio-economic realities and educational progress of RTE students was already underway in March, 2020 when lockdowns were announced. A year into lockdowns, in March 2020, RightWalk revisited the same families and students on field allowing a comparative analysis of educational conditions pre and post Covid. Data gathered from across 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh evaluate RTE students’ struggles during Covid and their families’ willingness to invest in education. The findings of the study shed light to the many over-looked socio-economic realities that thwart the intended efforts of RTE. Samina Bano, Founder & CEO RightWalk Foundation, Amod Kumar (IAS), Prof. Sharique Hasan from Duke University -Fuqua School, and Prof. Anuj Kumar from the University of Florida collaborated to co-author the research paper titled “Educational Inclusion and Behavioral Spillovers at Home”.
Unique data was gathered on changes to household behavior made by winners and losers of the Right to Education lottery in Uttar Pradesh, India between 2017–2019 to analyze the spillover effects of RTE. The paper compares subsequent household behavior of nearly 1,000 households who applied to private primary schools through the RTE 12.1.© lottery over three years.
RTE children face multi-tiered inequalities with respect to education. Before Covid, it was limited to accessibility to schools and less than ideal home environment and assistance with learning compared to their counterparts. Covid brought with itself a third tier of inequality — access to digital resources.
Pre-Covid, families earning less than Rs. 5,000 per month only constituted of 18% of the RTE pool. The same income bracket now contains 40% of the total families indicating that abject poverty has more than doubled in the state. Over 30% families were earning more than Rs. 10,000 per month, but Covid has reduced it to a mere 12%. The sharp economic fluctuations that followed Covid have widened the already existing income inequalities.
It was observed that while 95% of private schools that enrolled RTE students continued lessons in online mode. Unlike feared, Covid did not incur significant high drop-out rates in schools and 95% of RTE students continues to be enrolled. On other figures, 61% of RTE students were able to access online classes which is way above the average than their non-RTE counterparts from EWS groups. But considering ‘accessibility’ has various contributors, only 66% of students had access to at least one digital device to attend classes, while 34% had no smartphone at their disposal. But the silver lining in the survey was discovering a massive shift in families’ mindset towards investing in their children’s education. 60% of families reportedly bought new phones to help their children attend online classes despite reduction in family income.
WhatsApp was reportedly the most favored medium of instruction between children and the schools owing to its ease of use. Documents, voice notes, recorded video and voice notes can be sent and received seamlessly via WhatsApp appealed it to many schools. WhatsApp was also used for both live classes and asynchronous learning (sharing videos or voice notes and the children watching them later) and for submission of assignments. An enquiry into the nature of schooling in online classes revealed that only 32% of schools took interest in sharing daily lessons and provided regular feedbacks with children on submitted assignments, while the rest were just doing it for namesake. There were only 32% schools that were sharing regular feedbacks with the children on the submitted assignment, while the rest were just doing it for namesake.
And RightWalk’s survey further substantiates Farzana’s experience as a parent. She is one among the 39% of RTE parents who are not in a position to help their children academically. Without the direct help from a teacher the percentage of students performing at a very good level pre Covid dropped from 57% fell to a mere 25% post Covid. In many states 2020 RTE admission process could not be commenced due to Covid and the enrolment rates plummeted. But RightWalk Foundation’s continued efforts accomplished a record allocation of 87,728 enrolments under RTE 12.1(C) in Uttar Pradesh during a pandemic when many states could not even start the process.
This survey is empirical evidence that Covid has further broadened the existing inequality between children from advantaged and disadvantaged households. The RTE policy conceived to provide free and quality education to children from Economically Weaker Section (EWS) groups did encounter special challenges. While online education might be the way forward the infrastructural realities of children drastically varies from household to household. As long as these realities persist, for millions of under privileged children in India, online education would mean subpar education. Unless all children are given equal means to access education, the playing field would not be evened. This survey is a window of opportunity to assess the drawbacks of our system and re-evaluate where our efforts should be focused.
