Pintu, a 9-year-old son of a domestic worker has no access to smartphones and was unable to continue his studies in the traditional way during the pandemic. However, along with his peers, he is aware of their curriculum thanks to their local aunt who teaches them at home schooling.
According to UNICEF, 10 percent of students did not have access to a smartphone inside or outside their home during the pandemic. About 45 percent of children who did not take advantage of distance learning opportunities were completely unaware of any source from which they could learn.
But in India, homeschooling has come to the rescue and is trying to close the learning gap, class by class.
Parents, especially from low-income families, have turned to education centers during the pandemic to continue education. According to the ASER report, the share of children in education has increased between 2018 and 2021. Nearly 40 percent of children in India are taking paid private lessons during the pandemic, the ASER survey claims.
Demand for tuition fees was higher for low-income families. Even when pandemic-induced economic disruptions forced parents to drop or switch schools of their children, they were still willing to pay for tuition, government data shows.
Even when pandemic-induced economic disruptions forced parents to drop or switch schools of their children, they were still willing to pay for tuition, government data shows.
According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 survey, first-generation students or those whose parents were lower educated had a hard time keeping up with online studies. So, leading to an increase in additional classes.
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As schools open up in person, many parents still choose to spend money on small-scale personal coaching to bridge the learning gap. Many argue that the personalized attention, security, and payment flexibility that come with homeschooling has allowed tuition to thrive during the pandemic.
While those who could afford internet services turned to online education, those from low-income families sought classes from people in their neighborhood. “During the pandemic, people who lived on daily wages in our society had left their homes. Those who stayed could not afford to teach all their children online. Now that most children come back from their villages, they have forgotten their basics and I have had a huge demand for education from people from low income families. Children are shy when asking questions at school and at home, and their parents are not educated enough to train them. This has led to an increase in the demand for tuition fees in our region,” said 57-year-old domestic teacher Sushil Khurana.
Parents found safety in home schooling
“Students stopped going outside during the pandemic. The only medium left was online. Few parents also looked forward to home teachers because it was safe and preferred someone they knew. The parents were willing to pay for the teachers, even if they asked for a premium. The surge in demand was clearly due to security concerns,” said Anand Prakash, head of Academics & co-founder, Vedantu, which provides online classes to students from grades 4 to 10.
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Even now after the pandemic, tuition fees have increased. In online education, while the number of students is lower than last year, the number is still higher than before the pandemic as students need support to keep up with their school. This balance will undoubtedly go up in the coming years, Prakash added.
Need for tuition to go back to school
Filo tutor, an online tutoring app that claims to help students with homework, doubts, and concepts, says since May 2021 that their learning minutes on the app have grown 8-fold, while the number of tutors has grown 9-fold.
“This clearly shows the huge demand for direct tutoring in the country, given the deep learning gaps students face today due to the pandemic. In many cases we have seen students struggle with concepts that should have been solved in their previous classes,” said Filo co-founder Imbesat Ahmad.
Ahmad adds that “While Covid tailwinds have led to more students seeking to bridge the learning gap, we have witnessed continuous growth thanks to the strength of the product and the experience students gain from it. We teach 1 on 1 and LIVE There is no ‘batch’ of students and our teaching is personalized.” Students learn according to their rate of comprehension, he adds.
“There is a big change in the way students ask questions in, say, June 2021 and the way they ask now. Last year, during and after the second wave, students had to solve their problems immediately on the spot. It was a crisis solution,” said Varun Kumar, a math scientist who joined Filo in 2021.
Can learning loss be made up?
Tuition teachers can compensate for the learning loss by giving enough attention to the children so that their learning interest is not submerged. They can host quite a few concept learning camps or projects, experts believe.
“Since there has been less hands-on experience online, students need a holistic understanding of how concepts can correlate with each other. This can be achieved by conducting live projects and camps, such as understanding the basics of math in technology,” says Neelakantha Bhanu, the world’s fastest human calculator and CEO of Bhanzu – a math training platform.
According to a UNICEF survey, 76 percent of parents of children between the ages of 5 and 13 and 80 percent of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 reported learning less due to school closures.
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