Mumbai: Curbs hit study circles for poor students

Mumbai: When the city and its schools shut down in March last year, 18-year-old Usman Khan had to take up a job to make ends meet. His education took a back seat in what was supposed to be a crucial academic year for him – class X. Like Usman, scores of students from the economically weaker sections have been left behind. Many of them are now awaiting board examinations feeling significantly underprepared. Gigabytes of tutorial videos, worksheets and exercises generated amidst the shift in focus to digital learning means little to them.

Usman studies at the Mohili Village Mumbai Public School (MPS) in Saki Naka. “I don’t feel ready for the board exams. My father lost his job during the lockdown, so I had to take up one. I had a mobile phone, but I was loading and unloading packages for 12 hours a day,” he said. Usman returned to the city from Nashik in December 2020 but continues to work at a pharmacy. His classmate Avinash Sharma too had limited access to digital learning for most part of the year.

Their school had begun small study circles to help cope with learning loss but with more restrictions in place due to the resurgence of Covid-19, students are once again forced to rely entirely on digital access to their teachers. “Most of my students did not have a phone for the initial 3-4 months. We crowdfunded and procured personal devices for all our students but that by itself did not improve attendance for our online classes. Poor internet, electricity cuts, migration and child labour persisted till the end of the year,” said Usman’s teacher and Teach for India fellow, Rohan Rajapure.

Reports estimate that continuous access to digital learning in the state was available to as little as 27% of school students. In Mumbai, the situation looks better with a survey showing approximately 90% of about 6.2 lakh in both public and private institutions had uninterrupted internet linkage. On the flip side though, 60,000 students in the metropolis remained disconnected from digital lessons.

One of them, Santosh Bhagoji, a class X student from BMC’s MPS in Vile Parle, was without a mobile phone for nearly four months. “I damaged my mobile phone and didn’t have access for learning until my school sourced one for me a few months later. Most of my learning happened over the past few months when I came to school and studied with my teachers,” he said. Santosh like many others wants the government to further truncate the SSC syllabus and postpone exams to give them more time to prepare.

Teachers across the city are struggling to prepare students with limited or no digital access for the upcoming boards this year. Santosh’s teacher Suresh Abhale and other staff at the school collected funds to provide mobiles to 35 of its 150 students. “A lot of students have mobile phones but no access to data. Or there is one phone in the household which the parent carries to work and isn’t available for the kids. So, we created a lot of content that could be used asynchronously but the learning was largely impacted since students couldn’t clear doubts. We sent home worksheets and exercise books. Over the last few months, we called them in small groups to study,” said Abhale.

The fresh wave has, however, disrupted study groups and students are back to learning from home. The BMC has now asked its schools to distribute answer sheets and allow students to write their prelims at home in preparation for the board exams that begin later this month.