From Principal's Desk.

 

All our esteemed Stakeholders,

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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted  people irrespective of nationality, level of education, income or gender. But its consequences were not evenly distributed as the underprivileged were the hardest hit with education sector not being an except to it.  Students from privileged backgrounds who are able to learn  could find their way past closed school doors to alternative learning opportunities. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds had to bear the brunt when their schools shut down.

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During the pandemic, remote learning was the lifeline for education. Let's take the brighter side in consideration. Digital technology offers entirely new answers to the question of what people learn, how they learn, and where and when they learn. Technology can enable teachers and students to access a host of  audio, video & graphical resources  well beyond textbooks in multiple formats and in ways that can bridge time and space. 

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Teachers have also become empowered to use digital tools to reach out to students on a variety of live stream tools.  The threat has also proved blessing for many as they converted the crisis into an opportunity to hone their skills. Therefore, we should focus on the brighter side that the pandemic has taught us and be grateful to God that the pandemic is  on a flattened curve at the moment. 

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As schools reopen, there are two significant opportunities to seize :

 

• The first is to take stock of the lessons learned in this crisis as children return to school.

• And to assess the learning gaps.

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Student assessment should focus not just on what type of  knowledge and skills students learned from the curriculum, but also on what skills and competencies they demonstrated, or failed to demonstrate, during the period of remote learning.

 

Effective learning out of school has clearly placed greater demands on students’ autonomy, capacity for independent learning , self-monitoring and use of technology effortlessly.  These are all 21st century must-have skills in the  present and the future.

 

It is likely that some students were more proficient in some of these skills than others and consequently were able to learn more than their peers beyond the  school premises.  The plans to return to school should therefore focus on more intentional efforts to cultivate these essential skills among all students.

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As the school reopens we need to focus on building the infrastructure for online and remote learning,  But beyond COVID-19 pandemic, there are ample opportunities for students in expanding their learning time  beyond the school gate by adopting a variety of distance learning approaches. Plans for school reopening could consider blended modalities to allow all students to access the curriculum and learn at their own pace. Hope our student and teaching  fraternity is able to become compatible with these two modes of curriculum transaction. 

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Rajesh Sharma

Principal