While the School Education Department has been telecasting video lessons on its Kalvi TV since mid-July, students and teachers continue to wait for clarity on syllabus reduction as well as textbooks for all classes.
So far, most government and government-aided schools have distributed books to students of Classes 10 and 12. “Middle-school students are yet to get their books. It will be easier for students to follow the televised lessons with their textbooks in hand. While we have been given a schedule of the subjects for each class and timings, we want to be informed in advance about the order of lessons as well,” said Patric Raymond, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Graduate Teachers Federation.
The School Education Department has so far released a schedule for the period till the end of the month with telecast timings for lessons for each class. Teachers, however, want a schedule for the lessons that are being tackled through these sessions as well. “A proper schedule for televised classes could have been prepared based on the reduced syllabus. We are waiting for some clarity on how the syllabus will change, especially for students of higher classes,” said a government schoolteacher from Chennai.
In many smaller districts, students with DTH connections are unable to access the televised lessons through the cable channel. However, the School Education Department has said that there are plans to telecast the lessons on private channels, too, for better access.
Supplementary content
A teacher from Tiruppur said that while video lessons were not new for the students, they had so far been used only as supplementary teaching resources in classrooms. “Tamil Nadu has a bank of videos and other e-learning content on the DIKSHA platform. While these have been used in classrooms before, teachers have used them to supplement their teaching,” he said. The concern for most teachers, he said, is to follow up with students whether they were tuning in to see the lessons being telecast.
“Only a few students have been getting back to us with doubts or feedback. The lessons tackled through these TV lessons will be handled again in the classroom by the teachers, and all this should be taken into account when the syllabus reduction is being prepared,” he said.
For Class 12 students, the schools have downloaded the content, including video lessons, on their laptops. “This has been useful for students who want to learn and keep in touch with the syllabus. For other classes, however, we hope the textbooks are distributed at the earliest,” said S.N. Janardhanan, State president of the Tamil Nadu Higher Secondary School Vocational Teachers’ Kazhagam.
