Digital divide

ASER report has important pointers for online schooling

The number of new Covid-19 cases has come down significantly over the past few weeks in India, but the outlook remains fairly uncertain. A sharp trend reversal in other parts of the world, such as the US and Europe, suggests that the situation can quickly change for the worse. An increase in infection would limit mobility for an extended period and make the overall damage more enduring — not limited to loss of output. For instance, the pandemic is expected to reverse the progress in global poverty reduction since the 1990s. The other major area that needs policy attention is the accumulation of human capital. According to Unesco, about 1.6 billion students have been affected by the closures of educational institutes globally.

After over six months of continuous closure of schools across India, it is not very clear how the education system is dealing with the impact of the pandemic. A lot of content is being created digitally to help students, but there is a big question mark on how much of it is actually reaching children. The latest Annual Status of Education Report (or ASER Report) provides some answers for policymakers, both at Central and state levels. While this large survey in rural India shows that overall enrolment has not suffered a great deal, the pandemic can have a significant impact on learning outcomes. For instance, only about one-third of the enrolled students received learning material from their teachers during the reference week. Further, only 11 per cent students had access to online classes.

Although the proportion of children from households with smartphones has gone up from 36.5 per cent in 2018 to 61.8 per cent in 2020, there is still a large gap. Notably, the primary reason why students did not receive learning material was that the school didn’t send any. This shows that aside from access to technology on the part of students, which is an issue, schools have also not been able to adapt to the extent desired. Although the new education policy has talked a great deal about online education, India is not yet prepared. The policy acknowledges the digital divide. Also, online education is normally envisaged to be complementing classroom teaching, not substituting it. But the pandemic has forced a complete shift, at least for the near term, and increased the urgency of bridging the digital divide. This is critical because research shows that lower and interrupted schooling results in lower lifetime income.

Since it is not clear when schools would return to normalcy, the government must find ways to reduce the digital divide and contain the impact of the pandemic on education. A large number of households have suffered income losses because of Covid-19 and may not be in a position to buy smartphones and enable their children to connect to the school. In this context, the government can perhaps support weaker households with cash transfers. This will be a one-time expenditure, and experience shows that cash transfer on account of education tends to work well. The government will also need to sensitise teachers about the importance of online teaching in the present circumstances. The state of school education in India is far from satisfactory anyway, and the pandemic would only make things worse in the absence of timely policy interventions.