In response to the rapid burst of Covid-19 and the increasing number of positive cases, centre imposed a thorough lockdown across the country. Imposing a complete lockdown was a good decision to prevent the spread of the deadly disease but at the same time, it created a considerable number of problems as well. There has been a massive negative impact on the income of households since the lockdown was imposed. Almost all the sectors of the economy were badly affected. Among all the things, the education system was severely affected across the country, due to the near-total closure of schools, universities and colleges, including in JKUT.
The educational institutions in J&K were trying to restore themselves to function properly after the Aug 5th Lockdown. The educational had not restored yet, the Covid-19 broke open in the country and JKUT. The decision taken by the govt. to close all the educational institutions again created problems for the students. They have now no access to schools and other educational institutions. The students have already been suffering due to a lack of access to educational institutions because of the earlier lockdown and internet blackout.
The students have hardly completed a couple of chapters in each subject from the given syllabus since the schools were opened for the present session 2019-20. Now, what about the portion of the syllabus that has remained incomplete?
The number of infected persons is increasing day by day. Looking at the current pace of the spread of the disease, it is impossible to think about the reopening of educational institutions. In response to the problems faced by the students, the govt started providing virtual classes to students across the JKUT. The decision of providing online and virtual classes would have been beneficial to all the students if all the students would have the availability of smartphones and access to high-speed internet at the same time. At some or many places students from backward categories and financially weak families were given the smartphones to get an education via online and virtual classes arranged for them. The problem of unavailability of smartphones is not as sensitive and serious as is the lack of access to high-speed internet. Smartphones without high-speed internet cannot help a student to get access to education or anything else. In this way, there are only two ways forward to help students to get an education, either reopening schools or restoring the high-speed internet JKUT on the whole.
