Educational institutions have been the worst sufferers in Kashmir since August 2019. While education throughout India rather throughout the world has taken a hit due to COVID-19, things have been much worse in Kashmir. In its conflict torn history, education remains one of the most affected sectors in the region. These educational institutes remained closed for a good non-continuous part during the previous decade. A data available with a private school in Srinagar has had only 50 working days since August 2019, and when the world turned to online set up for almost everything including education, Kashmir remained shut with blockade on high speed internet for more than a year. If we see,
According to the United Nations, " It (education) is the single best investment countries can make to build prosperous, healthy and equitable societies. Education is not only a right, but a passport to human development that opens doors and expands opportunities and freedoms". In such a context, Kashmir appears to be short of this passport. In its conflict torn history, education remains rather we can say that it is one of the first sectors that gets affected. Every Time things get slightly downhill in Kashmir, education institutes are the first to close or remain closed. Things have remained tough, especially post 90's. As the separatist movement started and violence became a norm in the region, like most of the aspects of life, education had to bear a bunt. The closed educational institutes became normal. Such a scenario remained unchanged throughout the late 2000's, and almost throughout the 2010's. With unrest and violence in the valley, almost every other lock over the educational institutes were ensured.As of today, educational institutions especially schools have remained closed almost since 5th August 2019, when the former state was put under a blockade following the removal of the regions special status.
The blockade continued for following months which ensured the gates of schools and colleges remained closed. This was followed by winter vacations in December and the gates remained closed for further three months. In March, as the schools and colleges were preparing to open, the whole world welcomed the pandemic, education much like everything around had to shut down.
The education sector in India, which was hitherto slow to change, has been witnessing a massive transformation recently with changing job landscape, technological disruptions, demand for quality education and the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The pandemic caused further shocks to the system with schools forced to shut down during the lockdown period, and the transition of students and teachers to online teaching-learning. In India, around 250 million students were affected due to school closures at the onset of lockdown induced by COVID-19. The pandemic posed several challenges in public and private schools which included an expected rise in dropouts, learning losses, and increase in digital divide. The pandemic also called into question the readiness of the systems, including teachers to address such a crisis and sustainability of private schools. However, COVID-19 also acted as a catalyst for digital adoption in school education. With schools reopening in many states, it is important that a careful strategy is built in to smoothen the transition of children back to school after more than 15 months of home-based learning. This transition has to consider the learning losses which had happened over the previous year as well as take a futuristic approach to build a resilient system which can withstand any future shocks. NEP 2020, and subsequent government initiatives such as National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR) and National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat) are expected to provide a blueprint for this transformation. The paper is a culmination of CII School Summit 2021 which brought together policy makers, industry heads, and service providers together on a platform to deliberate on the road to recovery for schools post the pandemic. It analyses the impact of the pandemic across five themes and maps the various initiatives undertaken by governments and civil society organizations to address the challenges.
With such an educational environment existing, the signs are not good enough for the regions present and future. While the students will not be at par with they are supposed to be. They are already behind. The education they receive in such a situation can never have standard expectations. This will only lead to diminishing quality of education and subsequently diminishing the quality of professionals in the society. Such students will have a hard time adjusting to the actual educational system in future. And it will be difficult for them to compete with outside students.
Now again educational institutions have been closed due to the abrupt spike in Covid cases (omicron variant) in the valley by the administration and this too will have a negative impact on the quality of education and on students too. Education is an investment in a society that it reaps after each generation. It is this investment that will have effects on future development of a society. With improper investments one should not expect good results.
Author is from Bothu Bandipora and pursuing Master in Sociology at Kashmir University
