Avinash Azad
Early Times Report
Jammu, May 17: Tall claims of Directorate of School Education (DSE) Jammu about providing online education to the students of government schools is “much ado about nothing” as there is no infrastructure for this purpose in most of the institutions, said a source.
He said that the linear communication is not enough to cover all the students, in absence of required electronic gadgets.
“The DSEJ tried to imitate the top private schools of Jammu, as well the Kashmir province but without having proper facilities at place,” the source added.
“We have created whatsapp groups to share lectures with the students, but it is difficult to make them understand through virtual classes,” said a Plus 2 lecturer, wishing not to be named.
He said that though lectures are regularly uploaded on youtube channels created by respective schools, but still it in not sufficient. “Our 100 percent students do not have smartphones to attend the virtual classes, even all the lecturers don’t have the smartphones. If 20 percent students don’t access the virtual classes, it will be an injustice and also a violation of right to education act”, the lecturer said.
“Irony is that the DSEJ has asked supervisors to keep a check whether a daily report is submitted about the online education or not,” he added.
“In rural areas all the parents are not rich enough to buy a smartphone for their school going children and all of us are aware about this fact. It’s strange despite knowing everything the directorate is claiming that all is well. These online classes are nothing but an eyewash,” he said.
“We have no funds to create instant infrastructure for virtual classes or e-learning. The government needs to provide teachers with the equipment for the system of online education to work,” the lecturer added.
A Principal of a Higher Secondary School said that the “laidback approach” of the Directorate School Education Jammu could be gauged from the fact that most higher secondary schools in Jammu are without a faculty despite promotion of over 4000 teachers as lecturers.
Director School Education Jammu, Anuradha Gupta when contacted said that the teachers are manning e-classes on their own resources. “For those students who don’t have smart phones or access on e-classes the DIET has been tasked to provide to those students, it is not possible to run five-hours classes nowadays, so we are focused on conceptual learning”, she said, adding that helpline has been set-up where students through telephone can get answer of their queries. |
