The Centre for Equity and Quality in Universal Education (CEQUE) has suggested creating a student enrolment database and initiating a campaign to bring children back to school, so that the challenges of access and learning in view of the pandemic can be addressed.
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Its report titled ‘Learning equity during and post-Covid’ has, among long-term measures, also advocated data-driven planning for learning and adaptation of curriculum considering learning loss as a result of school closure since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We held our teacher innovator programme covering more than 300 teachers in six districts across Maharashtra. Our methodology helps teachers identify how they can improve student engagement, make level adjustments in their teachings, and use meaningful assessments to ensure that every child learns,” Uma Kogekar, CEO of CEQUE, said.
Apart from coaching teachers to improve their pedagogy, the CEQUE works on creating audiovisual resource books for teachers, monitoring their performance, and encouraging community involvement in the process.
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The report has said that a Statewide initiative to assess the real enrolment will be a critical first step. “Using the pre-COVID-19 enrolment data, surveys need to be undertaken to assess how many children residing in the particular geographies are not attending school,” it said, adding that based on this database, a campaign to bring children back to school needed to be kicked off.
The report has pointed out that the learning loss during school closure will necessitate reducing the curricular load at least in the next academic year.
As inequities in learning outcomes are likely to continue as the impact of the pandemic will be felt over a longer term by the most vulnerable, the CEQUE report has recommended coaching teachers in mastering skill-based pedagogies rather than teaching from the textbook, using hybrid models of teaching, and focussing on long-term skill building instead of short trainings, among measures.