Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Thursday announced a ‘Mission Mode Project’ for addressing learning losses among government school students, caused by COVID-19. He also allotted ₹200 crore for the initiative.
“There has been a great difficulty in learning since March 2020,” the Minister said.
Mr. Rajan explained that the Department of School Education would implement the programme in the next six months with the help of teachers, graduate students, volunteers and non-governmental organisations.
“Though efforts have been made to reach out to them by distributing QR-coded textbooks and by developing and disseminating audio-visual content on Kalvi TV, AIR as well as on social media channels like YouTube, they are not comprehensive or all-inclusive, as many students attending government schools do not have a personal mobile device or laptop to access the content in a consistent and organised manner,” he said.
Mr. Rajan said educationists had stressed the need to bridge the gap in learning and address mental stress and other changes in daily life since students were out of campus for over 15 months. “There will be classrooms in streets and classes under the moon. The project will reach out to the children in every nook and corner of the State,” he said.
Government sources said over 65% of the students remained outside the ambit of interventions, and almost all of them had not had the benefit of a structured online classroom transaction process on a par with private school students.
The government has prepared refresher content for all classes and it will be used for the first 45-50 days after schools are re-opened. Textbook pedagogy will be taken up only after this period.
