Education Minister of Karnataka Interacts with GRAAM’s Executive Director on imparting education during COVID Pandemic

Honourable      Education Minister of Karnataka Shri Suresh Kumar has called a virtual      meeting c     onvened on August 28, 2020. Minister invited  experts from  the NGOs working in the education sector across the state to seek their opinion on disseminating quality education for all during the pandemic beyond reopening the schools.

GRAAM’s Executive Director was invited to present GRAAM’s views on imparting education during COVID 19.  During the meeting      Dr Basavaraju R presented      GRAAM’s      recommendations on       how to continue teaching and learning as a continue process during COVID crisis.    

He suggested  Government  to think of stepwise reopening the schools in the rural area after implementing necessary precautionary measures. He  said that ``Teachers should stay minimum 15 days (in a      month) in the headquarters and should engage the students in learning’’. 

`` At least 50 percent of the teachers should practice this method on the rotation basis’’. He added that  ``     along with the teachers, knowledge of local graduates can be utilised to facilitate online education for the rural students’’ .  He proposed an idea of declaring current academic year as `ZERO YEAR’ and promoting primary school students to the next grade.      

Put forwarding his      idea for an alternative      model he      explained that       as COVID pandemic has worsen the situations in the u     rban area,  school may have to remain closed for the long time.  Thus he    suggested a model which has he come  a  cross when he was a  visiting Fellow  to Cornell      University, USA . He said “There they have adopted a model called - Transition Assistants to bring physically challenged children to the mainstream. According to this model a trained transition support professionals will coordinate with the children in the community and impart education to them. Following this model, area wise we can register the names of teachers and students in an online platform and allow teachers to run a community learning centre in their particular region. Based on the evaluations of those teachers, students can be promoted to the next class.”

 Quoting the example of      a t     ransition a     ssistants      he said that `` Through adopting this model we can protect the interests of private      school teachers and the students. We can also involve other trained teachers and graduates in this programme. Once this has been      implemented,      then      we can think of imparting education to the students based on their grades.  In this way at least we can involve them in the learning’’.           In his talk he emphasised on      an alternative model in      supportive to the technical model of education.    

Dr Basavaraju suggested to consider this adverse situation as      an opportunity to take up      an experiments to make        children’s      learning as a continuous process and look towards it positively.      He recommended to prepare      a learning plan and guidelines for the two      academics      years i. e 2020-21 & 2021-22.

Dr Basavaraju emphasised on the need of  documentation and study of      all the new initiatives (     taken in the line of  implementing an       alternative model of education)  for  understanding it in the broader perspective. He concluded his talk with the education minister after      Expressing GRAAM’s interest to take up a study on alternative model of education to be adopted by the government.