The anxiety for teachers, parents and students right now is palpable.
In a public education scenario which has over the years consistently failed to live up to any acceptable standards, barring a few exceptions, this pandemic can only serve make things even worse.
It’s been a long time coming but if we cannot re-imagine Nagaland’s public education system, many of our already marginalized students will only fall farther behind.
Even during a normal year of operation, most government schools in the State have struggled to authentically reach and support the various needs of students, but because of COVID-19, such students may have lost as much as an entire year of academic learning.
Distance learning is the only option left now, with the risk being too high to get kids back into their classes physically. Frustrating as they may seem, the Education Department, at least on the outside, seem to be considering a variety of options to help students learn during this time. But the skepticism over their various efforts at online education has emerged due to the long term failure to bring about any substantial improvement in the public education system of the State.
Data from each year’s board exam results make dismal reading for government schools; and improvements if any are only marginal. To top it off, these handful success stories are used as PR to paper over the huge cracks in the system.
In this scenario, it is not too cynical to presume that government school students, particularly in remote areas, will find it extremely hard to make any progress. It would not be surprising, given that the odds were already stacked against them from the start.
Students from these marginalised schools and their communities have had little to no say in policy making which affects their lives. This emerges partly due to State indifference, but even more so from a socio-political conditioning which normalises a hypocritical representative system that panders to the ‘collective’ while only working to ingratiate self-importance.
As a result, voices of these students, their parents, teachers and administrators who truly care for public schools have been drowned out, while no structural change has come.
Institutionalised apathy to these public schools has always been a source of gripe, and COVID-19 has laid bare the rotting foundations on which Nagaland’s public education system barely stands.
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