In a recent survey, when parents were asked if they approve of the government’s plan to reportedly restart schools from September 1 for Classes 10-12 and for Classes 6-10 after 15 days, only 33% answered ‘yes’ while 58% said ‘no’. Schools in the country have been closed for more than five months now, when the COVID-19 lockdown was announced in March. Many schools started online sessions for students to ensure that the learning does not stop.
Community and social media platform LocalCircles conducted a survey to understand the pulse of parents on how they feel about reopening of schools from September 1.
With a majority of the parents opposing restarting schools from September 1, parents were also asked for the reason as to why they are opposed to schools in India starting from September 1, 2020. In response, 13% said they cannot afford to take chances with children given the risk and unknowns related to COVID-19, while 1% said there is a serious risk with seniors in the family in case a child in the family gets infected. 9% said physical distancing will not be possible in schools, 5% said COVID-19 spread will increase even faster if schools were opened, and 2% said they believe online education is a good substitute, given the situation. 47% said all of the above were valid reasons for them while 23% said they are not opposed to opening of schools from September 1.
This shows that the risk and unknowns of COVID-19, hard to implement physical distancing in schools, and risk to seniors in the family, are amongst top reasons why parents don’t want schools to start from September 1.
With the total number of COVID-19 cases at 2.2 million and a daily caseload of approximately 65,000, India now has the highest number of daily cases in the world. The infection is spreading so fast in the country that it took only 20 days for the number of infected to increase from 1 million to 2 million and as per the WHO guidelines, children fall in the high-risk category. Children, if infected, can be carriers of the virus and spread it to other members of the family with grandparents being the most vulnerable as many families in India have a joint family structure, LocalCircles says.
The issue of children in villages and schools that do not have online education facilities was also discussed. Parents strongly feel that the government via radio, television and financial support should enable online classes in such schools. The idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds being deployed via a centralised mission into online school education was also discussed. Some parents even suggested that these funds be utilised to furnish low-cost computing devices in schools. A combination of such enablement along with a channel for each class on television and radio can play a role in educating children while schools stay shut, LocalCircles says.
LocalCircles will be submitting the findings of this survey to key stakeholders in the central government and with leadership of all states.
The survey received over 25,000 responses from 252 districts across India. 63% respondents were men while 37% respondents were women.