In a year that saw online learning take precedence, several school managements and teachers are a worried lot after evaluating the first term examination answer scripts as they feel that students’ performance is not up to the mark. Teachers say though they used several tools and tried to make online classes during the pandemic more interactive, they feel that students have not grasped the concepts.
While some teachers and school managements feel that students cannot be promoted to the next grade if they do not conduct a few offline classes, some others feel that they will have to tweak the nature of assignments and online classes to ensure that students pick up the core concepts so that they can be promoted even without conducting offline classes. In several schools, many students have not even been able to access online classes as they do not have the necessary gadgets or stable internet connectivity.
Lokesh Talikatte, State unit president, Recognised Unaided Private Schools’ Association, Karnataka, said that on an average, students have not been able to secure 18% to 20% during the mid-term assessment. Around 30% of students were absent for the mid-term examinations that were conducted online.
“Online education has not reached all the students. In addition, students encounter a lot of distractions when they are at home,” he said. What was making matters worse is that the government was yet to announce the trimmed syllabus for this academic year for the State syllabus, and urged the government to extend the academic year till June for class ten students.
Dakshayini Kanna, principal, Harvest International School, said they want to make sure that students grasp the most important concepts. “We want to focus more on teaching than the evaluation for all students except those in classes ten and twelve. Students of many classes did not have formal assessment and had multiple choice questions,” she said. She added that for students in classes ten and twelve, the school plans to conduct written test so that they are able to get the practice of writing for three hours.
Susheela R., whose children study in a school affiliated to the CBSE, said, “Our children have been told that another round of assessment will be conducted in January, which will be considered as the mid-term assessment as students have fared poorly in the assessments conducted in October and November. Instead of conducting another assessment, schools should focus on tweaking their teaching strategy so that it will help improve students’ learning levels.”
