Buried deep in the woods, nearly 3,000 residents of Achencoil are accustomed to frequent power cuts.
The lightest drizzle can snap the power line, plunging the village into darkness for long hours, sometimes days. During the monsoon of 2019, they were left with no electricity for nearly a week, a minor trouble compared to month-long blackouts in the past.
Achencoil and Achencoil Kshetram, the first two wards coming under Aryankavu panchayat, used to consider 24x7 power supply a luxury. But now their children, most of them students of Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, Achencoil, are finding it difficult to cope with online classes and remote teaching methods. “We have been trying to address this issue for long, but the technical challenge is too big. These two wards are around 45 km from the village headquarters and it will take hours to reach there through the forest. It is a real task for Kerala State Electricity Board personnel to identify the problem in the rain and repair the cable,” says R. Pradeep, president, Aryankavu grama panchayat.
Inadequate resources
Though the school authorities have arranged television sets at the nearby library and anganwadi, it is not quite adequate to bridge the digital gap. “If they miss the class and repeat session owing to power outage, the only option is to watch the recorded class on YouTube. But then, half the students have no access to smartphones or laptops,” says school Principal D.S. Manu. He also points out that the system is not very effective when it comes to the students of lower classes. “It is not easy to engage them virtually and a class will have students at different levels. They require individual attention and right now we are unable to provide them that.”
For the Class 12 students, the school has formed a WhatsApp group offering special sessions since most are not comfortable with lessons in English. “In Class 12, there are three students who do not have phones and we have asked some of the classmates to help them by sharing the notes.” At the same time, the school cannot implement the same strategy in all classes since half of the students have no smartphones. “At least 150 students are not part of the online groups and we have only three teachers attending Classes 1 to 10. With all theses shortcomings and regular power cuts, their studies are likely to suffer,” he says.
Absence of adult supervision is another challenge faced by the school authorities as many children are on their own once their parents leave for work. “We cannot ensure they are attending the virtual classes and some have already started skipping them. A majority of the students come from underprivileged families and around 50% of them belong to the Scheduled Tribes.”
The teachers are also struggling to open a channel of communication with the parents of 300-plus students. “The parents, most of them daily-wage workers, have no idea how to communicate with teachers through WhatsApp and currently we cannot think of any another alternative,” he adds.
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