According to a senior education department official, the department is coming up with a “100-day plan” to ease children into school with a focus on the government’s flagship programmes
As children return to class after over a year, schools are preparing to tackle the impact of the extended closure with a focus on foundational literacy and numeracy and socio-emotional learning.
This was addressed by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia after his visits to schools. “I am happy that after a long gap of 19 months, today schools from Nursery to Class VIII have reopened. Due to the closure of schools, education had suffered tremendously. However, it is expected that after schools reopening, our teachers and parents will work together to fight this learning gap of the children,” he said.
According to a senior education department official, the department is coming up with a “100-day plan” to ease children into school with a focus on the government’s flagship programmes — Mission Buniyaad, Happiness Curriculum, and the new Deshbhakti Curriculum.
Mission Buniyaad is a foundation literacy and numeracy intervention aimed at children in these schools, who had been identified as struggling with reading, writing and basic mathematics. Happiness Curriculum is a Social Emotional and Ethical Learning Programme run for students up to Class VIII and the new Deshbhakti Curriculum focuses on exploring civic learning.
At Kautilya Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, up till Diwali, every day will be dedicated only to activities and ice-breakers.
“On Monday, we had an orientation and a movie screening. In the next few days, we will have quizzes and drawing and other activities to get kids excited about school. We will ease into studies and for the first three months, the focus will be on Mission Buniyaad. This will be for all students up to Class VIII, and not just those who are weaker academically, since all children have faced a lot of upheaval in their learning,” said principal Chitender Verma.
At Shaheed Hemu Kalani Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, the total enrolment up to class VIII is 750, of which half were called on Monday and 120 attended.
“At the beginning, our focus will not be on teaching but on trying to get as many children to come to school as possible. We had intimated parents of the re-opening over the weekend, and it will take some time to collect the consent forms. I plan to call parents to school so that they can take a look at the precautions we’re taking and so that we can build their confidence,” said principal Bijesh Sharma.
According to the head of government school in Ambedkar Nagar, another big challenge is the socialisation of the younger children.
“Our students come from rough neighbourhoods and most of them have both parents going out for work, so there are a lot of different influences and a lot of experiences they might have been exposed to without being at school for one-and-a-half years. In the next three months, I hope we can address that as well through our interactions,” he said.
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