From Online to TV: Delhi Schools to Begin New Session Tomorrow

While private schools may continue to teach online, budget & govt schools still face the problem of access.

From online classes and televised lessons to weekly assignment and evaluation of home work, schools in Delhi are all set to begin the new academic session in different ways on Wednesday, 1 July, even as they remain shut due to the surge in the number of coronavirus cases across the country.

Springdales School Pusa Road has planned to begin the academic year online for all classes and will have three to four sessions for every class. However, in any of the sessions, students won’t be taught a standalone topic from a specific subject.

Instead, teachers at the school will combine related topics from different subject into one composite theme for each session, explains Principal Ameeta Mulla Wattal.

“The first class will begin at 8:30 am and go on till 8:45. During this period, students and teachers will interact with each other at the section level.”

Principal Ameeta Mulla Wattal.

While non-board examination classes would take on an experimental learning where students will explore how different subjects can be tied to one theme, for students of classes 8 to 12, online classes will be held in a much more standardised fashion, with videos, power-point presentation, etc.

For Govt, Budget Schools, Online Learning a Hurdle

While Wattal feels that both students and teachers must learn to work around limitations of online learning, RC Jain, President, Delhi State Public School Management Association, says that budget schools in the city may not be able to find a fix to the online education.

In order to deal with the problem, the schools registered with the association have been asked to give out homework for three subjects every week.

“Parents will come to schools in a staggered manner and collect home work for three subjects in a week. They will submit the home work done by students the following week and collect fresh set of questions for a different subject.”

RC Jain, President, Delhi State Public School Management Association

When asked how teachers will manage multiple schools, Jain said that in budget schools, most students stay around the premises and a few parents could come to school and distribute the work to be done among other students.

Meanwhile, a Delhi government school teacher told The Quint that so far, no official instructions have been sent by the Directorate of Education and that students have been advised to tune into Swayam Prabha for televised lessons.