[prasathlr]

Originally Posted by Kosfactor

The only positive side of online schooling is that the teachers get to keep their job and part of their salaries. Not every school is generous to keep paying salaries during this lockdown to the already less attractive yet very essential profession - teaching.

That's not the case for everyone. My mother-in-law has been teaching online for the past one month but the school hasn't paid the salary for this month yet. There are rumours that they might have to undertake 30-50% salary cut. The school started the classes early for certain classes. I honestly felt relieved when they cancelled the classes for 1-5 standards. She was way overworked.

Poor thing,she works from morning 8 till night 12 everyday. She is almost exhausted at this point. The school cut many jobs and have asked the existing teachers to step in to cover the ones fired. For someone in her 50s, she has picked up technology pretty well. They use the office365 suite and everyday she spends hours finding the right kind of content for the kids. I am impressed in the amount of effort she puts in everyday just so that the kids don't get bored. So when we say teachers, it just doesn't mean they just have to teach. There are loads and loads of administrative work. She is HOD of a department, she has review the subject content, give feedback to the teachers under her, review the way they take classes.

It is just too much to be teacher at this point.

[alpha1]

The reason for success of "school model" is the economy of scales. Multiple students across the city in same standard come together for education.

Now Covid spread easily wherever many people congregate - e.g. tradition schools.
Hence, online schooling. But frankly online schooling works only for the self motivated.
Adult human presence is necessary, which means the parents have to be with the kids during their online schooling.

How about a "door-to-door" school?
In other words a school held in your society / mohalla by teachers brought in (something like the local tutor but for multiple students).
Does it have a chance to work? Surely limits the number of children coming together.
The "tutor/teacher" may not be master of all subject, but for a primary school you just need to be jack of all trades.

[mvadg]

Originally Posted by prasathlr

That's not the case for everyone. My mother-in-law has been teaching online for the past one month

I am impressed in the amount of effort she puts in everyday just so that the kids don't get bored. So when we say teachers, it just doesn't mean they just have to teach. There are loads and loads of administrative work.

It is just too much to be teacher at this point.

Hats off to your MIL! I teach about once or twice a month for about 3 hours total, so I have a small idea of the effort required.

Let me give you another perspective as a volunteer teacher. Before the lockdown it was a hands-on craft / repair workshop situation. After the lockdown, it was decided that we needed to do something as the government forbade gatherings and the workshops had already been scheduled - we decided to go online as an experiment, if nothing else.

Here are my complaints against the current state of technology:

• Bandwidth requirements are quite high
• We don't have equipment or skills like YouTubers to create decent videos
• Conferencing software does not account for kids being mischievous (annotating on screen, talking out of turn, just making noise, etc)
• Presenter cannot control participants' webcams or mic easily
• There is absolutely no way to trawl through the huge number of LMS (Learning Management Systems) for casual instructors to find something that suits our needs
• There is really nothing "free", and the government has also not done its homework it seems to help out teachers (I'm guessing this, because when I try searching for online teaching tools for India, I don't get anything relevant)
• No feedback from students like in a face to face interaction - conferencing software simply does not cut it for teaching purposes
• Teaching hands-on stuff remotely, an oxymoron!

I really don't know how real full-time teachers are coping with the online classes, it requires a good infrastructure with tech support and assistance in creating online lessons that are interesting and absorbing. Not something you can just do by talking at the screen. Quite exhausting too.

[KiloAlpha]

My son is in 4th Std now, and the school he goes to had a slightly different approach to this whole online class thingy.

Initially, they had 2 online sessions (of 1 hour each) that they called "orientation", and parents were expected to attend those sessions along with teachers. In these sessions, all teachers were introduced and kids could interact with teachers.

After that, they moved to recorded, 15-minute sessions of each subject. No online (or live) classes. The first few recorded sessions were put on a dedicated online platform. Soon, many parents complained about the platform, so the teachers started uploading all videos to YouTube!

This went on for a few days, until the Government stepped in and banned even pre-recorded classes. So no more YouTube videos from my son's teachers.

Do I think this will work? Maybe partially. It all depends on the kids and parents, really. Their interest, ability, willingness to adjust schedules & do home-schooling, etc etc. In my case, it was working OK. We had hits and misses. But overall, I think it worked for us only because of my son's temperament.

[Miyata]

Originally Posted by prasathlr

has been teaching online for the past one month but the school hasn't paid the salary for this month

I wonder why? Exploitation? Most schools appear to be receiving the tuition/school fee as normal so why aren't they paying the teachers? If at all anything, many of the schools might even be saving some money with almost zero electric bills; if teachers are not being paid regularly, I am sure the janitorial staff and different admin staff may not receiving any salary (if they are still employed by the schools).

Earlier this week I checked with few schools for LKG admissions, some of them committed to online schooling (for LKG as well) and fees is as usual. Some schools are asserting they will reduce the fees by about 10,000/- odd for this year.

[prasathlr]

Originally Posted by mvadg

I really don't know how real full-time teachers are coping with the online classes, it requires a good infrastructure with tech support and assistance in creating online lessons that are interesting and absorbing. Not something you can just do by talking at the screen. Quite exhausting too.

From what I hear from my MIL, the teachers are exhausted because they are being overloaded by the school Management and worried about their salaries. They have adapted really well. I didn't know there was an app called Microsoft Sway. It seems like an 2020 replacement for MS Powerpoint. She doesn't just teach as students watch her, she prepares her topic using MS Sway with lots of pictures, carefully selected videos and rest of the lesson. So everyday she has to create 3 MS Sway presentation for the 3 classes she intends to take the next day. And that's a time consuming process for someone just started using the laptop and the internet.

Originally Posted by Miyata

I wonder why? Exploitation? Most schools appear to be receiving the tuition/school fee as normal so why aren't they paying the teachers? If at all anything, many of the schools might even be saving some money with almost zero electric bills; if teachers are not being paid regularly, I am sure the janitorial staff and different admin staff may not receiving any salary (if they are still employed by the schools).

As per Karnataka Govt. the schools shouldn't force parents to pay the fees. If the parents are willing only then they are allowed to collect the fees. But using this fact, the parents are not paying the fees. I remember her saying that only 2 students out of 40 in 10th Std paid the fees. So the school can't ask the fees and without fees they can't pay their staffs. Apparently they have again invested lots of money to setup the online classes and now they are desperately hoping to that parents pay the fees.

On the other hand, she had to invest in a laptop, broadband connection and an inverter for online classes. The school is not ready to bear these additional expenses and still expects them to work without salary or reduced wages.

Teachers life has become worse than the IT employees. She is on call everyday, even on Sundays she has school meetings with management and other teachers. She gets calls as late as 10:30 PM. The school management expects that the teachers work 24x7, they don't understand that not everyone is privileged. She stays with her parents who are both aged 86 and 82 years, hence she can't hire a maid to do the house work. She is justified to believe that no one should enter the house to keep them safe. She has to cook, take care of her parents, give them tablets, go through her old parents tantrums. Her life was a mess until I and my wife had to visit the native but seeing her we are still in the native and don't think we will be leaving anytime soon. We both are helping her in all the ways possible.

[m8002?]

Prasathlr has put it very well. The random government orders have been wrecking havoc at all places.
Even at my kid's school, today is the last day for payment of fees for this term and only 40% have paid. The lower class teachers are really overworked for online teaching and now the school doesnt have money to pay salaries (My wife was a teacher in the same school but took a break since last year. So get these inside information ). Many parents are demanding that school not charge for online work since the kids are not coming to school.

Wonder how these same IT parents will react if their company says no pay for WFH.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by prasathlr

On the other hand, she had to invest in a laptop, broadband connection and an inverter for online classes. The school is not ready to bear these additional expenses and still expects them to work without salary or reduced wages.

That's disgraceful on the part of the school! Even before this situation it should have been the duty of the school to ensure that each teacher at least has a laptop and internet connection, paid for by the the school. I was under the impression that most schools these days anyway will have an online component to their curriculum. I'm quickly learning that almost all schools have no such thing. Really sad. What do they charge such astronomical fees for then? No online infra, not paying teachers, what a scam! This covid-19 pandemic is really highlighting the deficiencies and absolute lack of planning in every sector, government and private.

[PrasannaDhana]

I run a few schools and trust me, online interactive education for Primary school children does not work.

I have seen how hard it is to engage the kids, physically present inside a classroom. Atleast until 2nd grade, online education is but a name-sake activity by the schools to keep the cash registers ringing( a lot of urban schools conduct online classes to charge fees during this Covid19 period). My schools are located in rural areas and the parents are unable to even pay their pending fees. Usually they pay it by the end of the academic year, by April. Corona made sure they had nothing to pay, and we were not ready to be that inhuman to insist them into paying the fee, considering the fact that majority of them are poor and lower middle class families.

I do recorded videos which is done for the following objectives :

1. To keep the children accustomed to their particular faculty and mentors
2. To make them acquainted with the classroom environment
3. To give them some activity to be done, mentally and to keep them away atleast for sometime from the TV.

Reality being, no amount of online classes can substitute the actual school classes. To bring some structure to their routine and to keep them from forgetting the habits of listening, reading and writing, we resort to online/recorded videos. I post videos publicly on YouTube. So whenever the parent is free, and whenever they have the internet connectivity (still a rarity at some villages), they can engage their kids for 30-40 minutes.

Even government of TN has banned online classes for primary education. One of the reasons behind this ban is that government schools and teachers don't give a crap about online classes for their students, and this would further make parents enroll the kids from government schools to private institutions.

Tough times indeed.

[sridharj77]

Interesting thread. We have to remember that this is not a situation teachers the world over have been trained for - The school system has been designed for close interaction, methods of keeping order in a class (technique is different from keeping a single child focused vs a group focused) etc.

I see a lot of parents in my younger one's class (UKG/PP2) complaining that "school is not innovative, we don't have time to sit for 1 hour with our kids during online classes, we don't want any screens for our kids, we are paying the school to teach them and not us teaching them" etc.

One mom even said, "Why don't you do one-on-one classes with every child for 30 minutes everyday"?

I have asked them - if you don't like, take your kids out of the schools you are complaining and put them in a school that does what you wish. If you think only the school and teachers are responsible for the education of your child, please rethink and reconsider your parenting methods!

Anyway, what options do we have? -
1. Send them back to school (and then complain about the school if something untoward happens?) - While US and European nations are doing this, their situation is different. We can't transplant ideas wholesale in our country.

2. Stop all schooling till vaccine is found?
We don't know when that will happen and this academic year may be lost as well.

Internet connection not available is an opportunity for us to quickly ramp up infrastructure in rural areas

Also, Kids are very resilient - they may not be sitting in front all the time, but they are listening all the time! It will take some time, but kids will soon realize that this is the new normal. We have to be patient, sit with our kids for a couple of weeks. It's on us to help the schools and teachers to see how we can educate our kids in this nce in several lifetimes situation.

As my last rant, we seem to have become a nation of chronic complainers - everything from bad roads, bad Govt, bad bosses, bad companies.. the list goes on. Can we not sit together, talk and find a way to work towards our goals?

[HTC]

Medical, teaching and engineering are noble professions. Those help build nation and shape the next generation. But sad part is all these have become business and money making avenues to the connected and having loads of black money.

My famlly (both from dad and mom side) has more than 20+ teachers. All government. Weather government or private, they are treated same. Delayed salaries, unplanned transfers are very common. But most continue to teach due to the respect they get from students and common people.

In bangalore, my daughter goes to a school where government stipulated fee part is only 5%-10% of what we pay. Rest is all bogus for infrastructure, pool which is never used, karate- dont know what they teach, yoga, audio video sessions blah blah.

Children's mind is like sponge. It can absorb only so much per day. Even if they give all these facilities most of them dont matter to my kid.

During corona , they forced parents to pay fee, saying- online class and books wont be given if fee not paid. I ended up paying even transport fee of 28k. Now that none of that is happening, will they refund?

Parents are left with no choice. If fee is high, we can enroll at govt school. Even if teaching is fine, socialising with other kids wil be challenge for my kid. Hope things wil change in future.

For my kid in 4th std now. I have not forced to go through online video. She is happy catching butterflies outside onstead of studying . Waiting to see what else this corona has in store for all of us.

[motorworks]

My son is in Grade 3, and his school had commenced live classes about 3 weeks ago, thru Microsoft Teams. Initial hiccups aside, i thought it worked well, they had about 3 main sessions at about 30 minutes each and in between they had other general sessions for another 30 mins. All sessions had small breaks in between and hence it did not seem too intensive on the kids. At least that is what I perceived. However, post this new ruling from the Karnataka state govt, the teachers had been then forced in to some pre recorded sessions and then they started pushing more of assignments, which then put more pressure on the parents.

Anyway, from this week they have stopped all classes, and I think they are waiting for further guidelines. Im hoping the HRD ministry steps in and takes a slightly flexible route in this whole aspect.

[Herschey]

I am based out of Delhi and have a daughter studying in 2nd standard. We are a small family of 3 with both me and my better half working from home. Here are my thoughts, some of the challenges we faced and what was our way around them.

The Lockdown

The national lockdown was announced very abruptly and there were certain changes we had to bring about in our routine lives. I had the prior experience of working from home so while it wasn't much of a challenge for me alone, it was my wife's situation which made it difficult for both of us. Her work location is Noida and since Delhi-UP borders were sealed, she was left without her laptop (she doesn't carry it back home everyday). Because of this, we both had to share and make do with a single laptop which was a bit of a pain initially. And then, my daughter's school announced weekday online classes starting from 9:30am-11:30am. So now, there were three people using a single laptop. I had to change my morning schedule a bit but eventually it all fell in place. My wife's laptop was recently delivered by the company (their IT and transport team worked together on this) at out place so this problem has been pretty much sorted out and we both have a normal schedule now.

The Schooling Content & Delivery Systems Used

My daughter's school has been using Cisco Webex for online classes and since both me and my wife have the experience of using it at our workplaces for ages, we had absolutely no issues as far as the medium of delivery was concerned. The school had eBooks (digital versions of the actual books/ courseware) and they uploaded weekly modules to be covered for each subject on the school's website. We downloaded it from there and the same modules were discussed in the online classes. Its a simple process but it works equally well or maybe even better than a LMS. Sessions are of 25 minutes each for every subject with a break of 10 minutes from 10:20-10:30 am. We never made use of a mobile or a tablet for accessing online classes to avoid straining our daughter's eyes and always made use of the laptop connected to a big screen monitor at my workstation at home. Yes, there were initial hiccups with parents who were not familiar with Webex but most of them were quick to adopt and be comfortable within the first 5-10 minutes. The class teachers (there were 2 present online for every session) were also good at explaining to the parents about the platform and how to use it. Webex provides the Meeting Administrator complete control over the participants and hence the teachers could mute (both mic and camera) everybody else when not required. So there was no fuss there either.

A few days back, my daughter's summer vacations were announced beginning June 1, 2020 lasting till August 2, 2020. To maintain her early morning routine and study schedule, 2 more parents along with us decided to continue having these study sessions and work on the holiday homework thereon. So now, my wife, me, and the other parents become teachers cyclically and teach all the kids. Its mostly fun but can also get irritating and boring at times. My two cents; teaching such young kids is definitely not as easy as it seems. On my part, I have been able to successfully deliver sessions on mathematical tables till 20, three digit addition and subtraction, single number multiplication and division, and 12 and 24 hour clock. So far, the kids seem to be enjoying it and liking all their pseudo teachers. Major benefits of having an e-module approach rather than a completely online LMS was that kids were not required to be facing a screen all the time and that kids also developed the habit of physically reading through the books (well printouts in this case). My daughter has really picked up on her English reading speed and is showing consistent progress with Hindi as well. All in all, I've had no issues till now.

The Money Involved

The government of NCT of Delhi had announced that the schools in Delhi can only charge tuition fee during the entire period of schools' lockdown. The schools are still under a lockdown so the parents are expected to pay only the tuition fee till the same is lifted. I don't foresee it getting lifted anytime soon, at least not here in Delhi which is witnessing a steady rise in covid cases on a daily basis. Even if it gets lifted, I would be reluctant to send my kid to school unless a cure for the virus is found or there are 0 cases reported for at least 30 days. I feel she is too young to follow all the prescribed protocols religiously and hence, we just can't take those risks.

I have the habit of depositing the school fee on the 1st of every quarter (yes, I pay quarterly in advance as I find it convenient) and did so on April 1, 2020 as well. I paid the full fee including the transportation charges and everything else while the Delhi govt. announced its fee notice on April 4, 2020. So I have paid extra which would be adjusted in the upcoming month's fee. Some of the parents had not even deposited the mandated tuition fee as per the notice displayed on the school's website. The school was quick to mention that they were facing difficulties in making payments to their teachers as a result of the same.

Private School: No Longer A Not For Profit Institution

The school's notice did beg a question. Do schools really work on such tight budgets that the regular fee they charge is not even able to finance such exigencies? The answer is 'NO'. A simple look at the audited financial data of the societies which run these institutions would come as a rude shock and a complete eye opener for any parent. These educational societies have become huge money minting businesses guaranteeing a huge steady flow of income with customers lining up to buy their services (enroll in their institutions). What is even more shocking is that a lot of politicians and businessmen own and run these institutions themselves. This cartel doesn't really care about anything else but their individual interest and doesn't shy even a bit in lobbying hard against parents. Running this neat business of private schools are some of the dirties minds who think of nothing else but their own individual interests. Forget the audited reports and just carry out a simple calculation basis the fee you pay and the approximate number of kids enrolled in the school. Account for all necessary expenses including salaries, consumables (electricity, water, telecom, fuel), service and replacement of assets, asset depreciation, provisional and incidental expenses, and then add an additional 10% of the overall amount on the top. The kind of profits these schools make would certainly be an eye opener for one and all.

The Fact Of The Matter Is...

Saying the schools don't have the money to pay salaries is a complete farce. However, not depositing fee on time is also not right on parents' part. We sign up for it and deliberately choose not to protest against this cartel. The govt. is least interested in developing human capital of this country and more keen on pumping money into socialist schemes like MNREGA. For them, all education should be privatized and hence become expensive while a white elephant airline and several other non critical businesses should remain govt. owned to ensure low prices. Its a sorry state of affairs but looks like the common man is badly stuck forever in this conundrum.

[shanoj]

My daughter had online classes for a week. It was using MS Teams and it was going on very well until the government decide to ban online classes for classes up to 5. The teachers were well trained in using Teams and the kids enjoyed the classes. I had to help out my daughter (in class 4) initially in using the SW, but she was able to pick up fast. I thought this was the perfect substitute for the regular class room classes.

None of the reasons quoted by the government authorities makes sense to me. Not having classes is not going to reduce their screen time. And in this case, the screen time is spent on learning. The haves have-nots exist in the society everywhere. Banning online classes for some is not going to help some other. Instead of banning, the authorities should have looked at other medium like TV to conduct online/recorded classes for the less fortunate. The Kerala government was able to do this well with their Victers TV channel.

My main problem with all these is that the government at some point may rush up to open the schools because no class is being conducted. There were talks of schools reopening in July, but I think now that has been postponed. But you never know when they will decide again. If the online classes continued, at least there was no need to open the schools at least until December by when the Covid19 situation would be much better than what is now.

[Ferrariwell]

Karnataka government has already granted persmission to reopen higher degree colleges and schools (11-12th grade) from July. They have even conducted one remaining exam for PU students (on the low key) during this month itself in which a girl who’s father was tested positive came for the exam and might have infected the students sitting beside her. The board is now trying to hush up the incident.

http://https://www.google.co.in/amp/...088-2020-06-20


Worse still the DTE board of Karnataka has still decided to go ahead and conduct exams for students with absolutely no measures or guarantee given that preacautions will be taken. Students from out of state are being asked to travel to Karnataka effective immediately and are being asked to stay in intermittent quarantine (where people with no history of corona are being kept with suspected corona cases) of the said period depending on which state they are from followed by home quarantine. All this while the syllabus is no where even half near complete. During this pandemic is it really our nations first priority to take exams ? Don’t get me wrong we as students are not lazy I am not saying exams should be canceled but with the COVID-19 situation being at its peak is it really wise to have so many children sitting in the same room at the same time ? When huge IT companies themselves are pushing people to work from home why is it that the students are being made to write exams. Shouldn’t our health be of more priority than an exam ?