Poor performance by students in their midterm examinations has led private schools, especially in Bengaluru, to lay greater emphasis on physical classes. Many schools, after consulting with parents, had decided to resume offline classes after students were vaccinated, while others offered a combination of online and offline lectures.
“We felt that we had tweaked our online modules to ensure best learning outcomes, but the results show that it is not the case,” said a principal of a city school, echoing the views of other managements.
Some schools have decided to make attendance mandatory for physical classes. Although the government had allowed schools to reopen in a phased manner from August 23, many private schools had postponed it as they did not want to take the “risk”, and in many cases, parents had not consented to send their children to school.
Sumanth Narayan, founder of Shanthinikethana School, said they decided to resume offline classes last week for class III and above as they were not happy with the performance of the students in the midterm examinations. “We always knew that there was a huge learning gap, but this examination was a wake-up call for us. We realized that students are tired of online classes,” he said.
Lokesh Talikatte, State unit president, Recognised Unaided Private Schools’ Association, Karnataka, said while most State board private schools had resumed classes, many Central board schools had not embraced it completely. “But after seeing students bag low marks, teachers and school management are worried that the results would be affected if they do not resume classes immediately,” he said.
However, some schools are having a tough time convincing parents of the need for mandatory attendance. After seeing the results, more parents are open to sending their children to school, but not all, said teachers.
D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary School, pointed out that school managements are not able to conduct both offline and offline classes. “As we are not able to provide the option of online classes, it has by default forced students to come to school physically. School teachers have been telling students that it is mandatory to attend offline classes,” he said.
