Digital divide of the classes

A month from now, school students across Tamil Nadu, from Kindergarten to Class 12 would be completing a full term of online classes and would be expected to take their first-ever online quarterly examinations from their homes. As challenging as the past few months of online schooling has been for all parties concerned – students, teachers, parents, school managements and the school education department – the way forward seems even more blurred, confusing and more importantly, discriminative.

While the Centre and State can be commended for coming out with detailed guidelines on conducting online classes within a short span of time, the framework that has been put in place is too broad-based and focusses on larger, conceptual goals while missing out on the details, which are so essential to make this kind of a system work. To begin with, the state government’s ‘Guidelines for Digital/Online Education’ document recognises three modes of digital education: Online – for when a computer, smartphone or smart TV with internet connectivity is available; Partially Online – for when one has the devices, but no regular internet and Offline – for poor or absent internet, where students have to rely on TV channels or radio.

And herein comes the great divide. While most private and government-aided schools are gearing up to conduct their first term examinations using sophisticated digital applications in the Online mode, a sizeable chunk of the student population from economically weaker backgrounds and rural parts of the state who use the Partially Online and Offline modes of learning, would probably be sitting at home watching the ‘Kalvi Tholaikatchi’ channel and, hopefully, making notes on sheets of paper with little or no interaction with their teachers.

While the Online mode students are expected to sit in front of a camera and type into their digital answer sheets, under the supervision of an invigilator who monitors at least 20 students from his or her laptop for malpractice, there is no clarity yet on how the Offline mode students would give exams. As the year progresses, this digital disparity is expected to grow. With the entire academic year likely to be conducted online, the state needs to address the ambiguity in evaluating students’ performance this year and come up with a uniform and fair system of student assessment.

Incidentally, the 34-page document brought out by the state government has just a brief mention on assessment of students, which has been summarised in the last line of the section as ‘assessment shall be meant only for monitoring purposes and shall not be linked in any case to performance assessment or final grading’. If the entire year’s portions are going to be taught online, could there be another way to assess or grade students?

If the state government does not come up with a concrete plan to evaluate student performances keeping in mind students pursuing all forms of digital education right now, they would be bracing for the perfect storm towards the end of the academic year and the greatest damage would be for those students who are in Classes 10 and 12. An unproductive academic year could mean a lost opportunity to pursue their dreams, and the possibility to build a future.