Turning the page to lessons lost: A community makes up for Covid-induced learning loss - together

It was a calm Sunday morning in Mendukuli village, one of the remote areas in once Maoist-dominated district, Malkangiri, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. Cutting through the calmness of the morning, chants of 20-odd highly enthusiastic children were reverberating in the village community centre. They were learning backward counting through a song while around 40 others were busy doing their class-appropriate studies.

It was the picture of a learning centre set up by the villagers. Mendukuli under Dalapatiguda gram panchayat in Mathili block is one of the few tribal-dominated villages, where residents took upon themselves to compensate the learning loss of their children incurred during the school closure due to the Covid-induced lockdown.

A coordinated approach

“We are not alone. School teachers, members of the School Management Committee (SMC), parents and civil society members constantly support us in this endeavour,” said Jhunubala Maharana (19), a village girl. She was appointed by the community people as Gaon Mitra to teach the children in the learning centre, along with another local resource person (LRP).

“Out of 200 families in our village, hardly 3-4 families had smartphones when the pandemic broke out. Almost all the children were disengaged from their studies as the school closed for around two years,” said Nrusingha Pujari, SMC president of Mendukuli UGME School.

“When the schools reopened in February 2022, children were unwilling to go back to attend classes,” Purnima Majhi, the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) of Mendukuli village, told The Federal.

Most of the children including girls were engaged in farming activities and working as coolies or daily wagers to support their family income. Others, especially girls, were occupied with household chores and the boys were wasting time roaming around, Purnima added.

“Amid such a situation, encouraged by Debjeet Beura, an NGO volunteer working with the Mathili block administration for educational upliftment of tribal communities, we set up the learning centre in June, 2022,” pointed out Nrusingha.

Villagers take the charge

While two LRPs teach the students regularly at the learning centre, other villagers also contribute according to their ability, added Nrusingha. “Whenever I get time, I teach Odia and English alphabets and numbers to the children,” added Nrusingha, who had studied up to Class 8.

“The highest educational qualification of most of the villagers is Class-VIII. However, we leave no stone unturned to impart our children whatever knowledge we have,” said Sangita Pujari, Dalpatiguda Panchayat Samiti member. “We want to make sure that our wards read and write properly so that they can grasp further learning at schools,” she maintained.

From anguish to aptitude

Jitu Khara (11) was studying in Class 4 when the pandemic broke out. He was promoted to Class 6 when the school reopened. “As I went to school, I found myself to have forgotten almost everything – addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and even numbers and alphabets. It was so disheartening,” said Jitu.

“Here in this centre, I am re-learning the forgotten lessons and also studying new chapters – LCM, HCF, fractions and many more,” added Jitu with twinkling eyes.

The learning centre in Patraput, a neighbouring village in the same block, is a panacea for Samari Nayak, mother of three – studying in Class 3, 5 and 6. “Here the centre functions in the evening. After the school gets over, children come home, freshen up and get back to studies at the centre that operates in Patraput Upper Primary School,” pointed out Samari.

All her children are now efficient so far as their alpha-numeric abilities are concerned, she mentioned.

The parents, villagers, teachers, civil society and the school committee members have pledged to bring the children back to schools post Covid, pointed out Chakradhar Mahalik, a teacher of Patraput Upper Primary School. “We never shy away from visiting the students’ houses and enquire about the reason if we find him/her absent in school,” he added.

The digital barrier

So far as the mobile phone and internet connectivity during the pandemic times is concerned, according to Odisha Economic Survey-2020-21, the tele-density of Odisha was 76.46 per cent against the national average of 87.37 per cent as on March 2020. Similarly, the number of internet subscribers in the state was 43.95 per cent in comparison to the national average of 55.12 per cent. The wireless tele-density was 62.25 per cent in rural areas and 137.14 per cent in urban areas. The internet subscription in rural areas stood at 34.51 per cent, whereas it was 85.98 per cent in urban areas.

As per the report by the Odisha School and Mass Education Department, out of 67,128 government elementary schools in the state, only 27.68 per cent initiated online education during Covid. The number of children who could attend online classes was only 31.95 per cent, as per the report on understanding the educational situation during Covid-19 in Odisha, titled, The Paused Classrooms, by the Save the Children India and Orissa RTE Forum. At least 80 per cent parents of school-going children in Malkangiri, Kandhamal, Nabarangpur, Rayagada and Deogarh districts did not have a smartphone whereas 40 per cent parents in Kandhamal and Malkangiri districts did not have a regular mobile phone, the report maintained.

While the Union Ministry of Education’s National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 indicates that education levels across the country had decreased during the pandemic, the performance of backward tribal pockets remains very low.

A model for educational transformation

When the world endured a huge learning loss in schools, the community-managed centres in several villages in Mathili, one of the most backward blocks in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, are effectively making up for the loss, pointed out block education officer Sashibhushan Mishra. By inculcating learning habits among children, these centres help in a great way in enhancing the school attendance and checking the dropout rates, added Sashibhushan.

With a short-term programme, however, it is difficult for the children to recover the two years of learning loss, underlined Lalit Khara, a community resource person belonging to Upargadiali village under Udulibeda panchayat. “The children in my learning centre at Udulibeda have improved a lot. Still, they need guidance,” he added, mentioning that the programme might be closed in the next couple of months.

All the stakeholders need to come forward to continue the centres on a long-term basis until the students achieve grade-appropriate learning aptitude, Lalit pointed out.

A number of initiatives, including Odisha government-sponsored Learning Recovery Programme and Central Government-sponsored Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, which aim at compensating the learning loss and improving the standard of education, need to involve communities and integrate community driven social audit system, pointed out Basanta Kumar Nayak, a policy and budget analyst, who works with the Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD), an Odisha-based civil society organisation, which works in inaccessible pockets of Malkangiri district to improve the educational standards of children under a project titled ‘Samadhan’.

This community-managed learning centre model with involvement of all the other stakeholders has a lot of potential, Nayak added. However, it is at a nascent stage. It should be strengthened with more trained manpower, learning material and proper infrastructure. A properly developed model can be replicated both in rural and urban areas for the advantage of students belonging to unprivileged sections of the society, he maintained further.

According to Ananta Kishore Swain, an educationist, in backward areas like Malkangiri, where people cannot even afford to send their wards to schools, providing them paid tuition is almost impossible. Such a community-led education initiative can transform the education scenario in tribal pockets, he emphasised.