With the decrease in the case of coronavirus in the country, now schools are being opened gradually. After almost 18 months, state governments are easing lockdown rules in a phased manner and schools are reopening. Meanwhile, LEAD, a leading edtech (education technology) company, has surveyed parents to get their minds set on the issue of sending their children back to school.
59% of the people who took part in this survey feel that their children’s education has been lost, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the capital Delhi, 76% of parents want to send their children back to school. He believes that it is possible to get the entire school experience only with the reopening of schools.
They conducted the survey among 10,500 parents living in the metro, and non-metro cities, whose children study in classes 1 to 10.
Priority to social distancing
LEED’s survey suggests that keeping the health and safety of their children in mind, the highest priority for 22% of parents is the vaccination of school staff. Apart from this, 55% of metro parents considered social distancing to be the most important. Then it was the turn of the health care facilities. 54% of parents believed that the health security of their children was important to them. Here non-metro parents (52%) said that sports and social distance are of equal importance.
Parents spoke about the challenges faced by children and themselves during the pandemic and how they used to juggle between ‘work from home’ and ‘school from home’ in the initial days. The study found that 47% of metro parents spent 3 to 4 hours every day in their children’s school, compared to 44% of non-metro parents. Further, the survey reported that a majority of parents (63%) feel that being in a physical classroom improves children’s social interactions.
The concern of non-metro parents
Sumit Mehta, Co-Founder, and CEO, LEED, said, “The past year, and a half has not been easy for teachers, principals, schools, and most importantly, students. Children from low-income households have suffered the most in education due to a lack of access to data and devices. Our survey clearly shows that 76% of parents in Delhi want to send their children back to school. We must prepare to welcome children to the school by taking all necessary precautions and adopting safety measures.’
In non-metro, only 40% of parents said that their children had studied on personal computers, while almost 60% of metro parents reported that their child continued to study on computer/laptop even after a year of lockdown. Most of the non-metro students attended school through smartphones, often causing concern to parents. The data also showed that non-metro parents were more concerned than metro parents with their children’s virtual learning environment in terms of skill sets for the future.
What is the cause of concern?
53% of metro parents considered problem-solving and logical reasoning as the most important skills, compared to 47% of non-metro parents. Similarly, over 50% of metro parents considered digital literacy to be an important skill, compared to only 45% of non-metro parents. Professional opportunities and skills, ethical and ethical listening, and coding and computational skills were some of the other skills that Metro parents considered important.
70% of parents, both metro and non-metro, said they were included in their children’s education, but the presence of mothers engaged in this study, was higher (21%) in metro cities, compared to 18% in non-metro, that is less. This shows that the responsibilities of working women, in particular, had increased during that period.
