According to UNICEF research, around 8% of children may not return to school at all, and more than half of instructors believe remote learning is unproductive.
NEW DELHI: According to a poll conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 80% of children aged 14 to 18 reported poorer levels of learning when compared to when they were in school. According to the report, 45 percent of pupils were unaware of any learning materials during the extended school shut down due to COVID-19.
According to the study, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected migrant and Scheduled Tribe households, with 10% of families unable to send their children back to school and 6% requiring children to assist in earning a living. Between August and September 2020, 6,435 respondents, including parents, adolescents, and teachers, participated in a survey for UNICEF India’s study, Rapid Assessment of Learning During School Closures in the Context of COVID-19.
10% of students don’t use any device
According to the survey, “76 percent of parents of kids aged five to thirteen years and 80 percent of parents of teenagers aged 14 to eighteen years feel that their children are learning somewhat less or considerably less than they would in school.” According to the research, 15 percent more migrant parents and 9% more Scheduled Tribe parents claimed that their children were learning less today than they were before the pandemic, compared to the rest of the questioned population.
According to the research, 10% of kids do not use cellphones, feature phones, television, radio, laptops, or computers for any reason, whether they are privately owned or accessible within or outside the home. For primary children, the use of these gadgets ranged from less than 2% to 23%, according to the report.
Radio is outdated
“The most popular devices among students are smartphones (76 percent of secondary students and 66 percent of elementary students) and television (71 percent of secondary students and 69 percent of elementary students), followed by feature phones (71 percent of secondary students and 69 percent of elementary students). “Less than 20% use laptops/computers, and radio is the least used,” according to the study. “Contrary to popular assumption, the study shows that radio technology may be outmoded for today’s students,” according to the article.
50% teachers found remote learning ineffective
45 percent of the students polled say they are unaware of any learning resources. According to the research, television and feature phones are underutilised for learning. In the six months leading up to the poll, 40% of students indicated they had not used any type of remote learning. Data prices were cited as a major barrier to adopting remote learning alternatives by 37 percent of families, device affordability by 31 percent, and network connectivity by 27 percent.
“A shortage of textbooks and other learning materials is cited as a difficulty by 21% of parents, and almost one-third of parents ask for help with this, implying that distribution programmes have not yet reached a substantial number of students,” according to the research. Moreover half of the instructors polled thought that remote learning materials and practises were ineffective compared to classroom instruction.
Boys use WhatsApp more
“More than half of students who used remote learning used several resources. WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app among students and instructors (over half of students and 89 per cent of surveyed teachers). According to the research, “many parents, teenagers, and instructors perceive value in technological tools, and some even feel they are more successful than in-person learning.”
It also said that students who are considered to be learning more are more inclined to employ high-tech gadgets. Between females and boys, there is an eight to sixteen percent difference in WhatsApp and Youtube usage, with boys being more likely to use these apps. According to the research, there is a 24% difference in WhatsApp usage between urban and rural kids aged 5-13 years, and a 15% difference between students aged 14-18 years.
8% children will not return to school
According to the research, over a third of elementary students and nearly half of secondary students believe their mental and socio-emotional health has been bad or extremely poor since May 2020. Parents from migrant households (60%) and ST families (53%) assessed their children’s mental and socio-emotional well-being as poor or very poor, according to the report, compared to the total sample’s condition.
Around 10% of families couldn’t afford to send their children back to school, and 6% required their children to assist them to earn money. “Approximately 8% of kids will likely not return to school in the next three months or after,” according to the research, with the majority (60%) citing health-related concerns.