Truncated student turnout coupled with a sense of disquiet among teachers was evident in arts and science colleges on the first day of the academic calendar for the odd semester of 2021-2022 session for intermediate and final year under graduate students, on Wednesday.
The student turnout was in the range of 40 to 50 % in private and government-aided colleges, and less in government colleges, according to teachers. The lack of seriousness on the part of students could, perhaps, be due to the indication given by the government that the physical presence of the students must not be insisted upon, guess teachers. In a six-day week, three days each have been fixed for intermediate and final year students on alternate days.
There were problems galore. Leave alone the problems within the campus that had not been cleaned up in many an institution, a large number of students attending online classes kept away purportedly due to the discontinuity in the 2GB free data per day scheme.
As per the Standard Operating Procedures, the teachers are expected to maintain social distancing among students in the classrooms. In colleges with large student numbers, the institutions had utilised all the rooms at their disposal including laboratories for seating the students.
But, the situation could turn unmanageable once the classes for the first-year students begin. Ideally, it would be better to conduct online classes for first-year students for a specific duration until the pandemic fear diminishes further,’ a professor of a government-aided college in a rural part of Tiruchi district said.
Teachers do hope that the student turnout, that of girls, in particular, could turn better from the start of next week. But, the compulsion for teachers to juggle between online and offline classes for the intermediate and final year students all through the six working days in a week has apparently caused consternation among many.
‘It is not about our sense of duty. Enormous workload is bound to dilute focus of attention. Also, we had so far been handling online classes for students from specific spots in the college campus with good signal clarity. We are now constrained to confine ourselves to the assigned classrooms. The problem herein is that we will not be able to engage the remaining 50 % of the students online simultaneously,’ a teacher of a government college said.
Woes of guest lecturers
It was a double whammy for the over 600 guest lecturers, the mainstay of the 10 erstwhile constituent units of Bharathidasan University.
Sans motivation, these guest lecturers had to not only work without salary for four months – since the university had stopped paying them from April – they also had to continue working in unhygienic settings.
‘Enforcement of the other aspects of SOP including physical distancing and other safety protocol is welcome. But, ignoring the hygienic need of students has caused enormous disappointment among teachers,’ a faculty member of the Government Arts and Science College, Srirangam, said.
According to the faculty, the onus is on the college principal to fulfil this very essential aspect of the SOP even if it would require utilisation of funds maintained under PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) head for which ₹500 is collected per student every year.
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