Fighting Nepal’s educational equity crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic

Following the spike in infections and death rates, the governments in nearly 200 countries across the globe announced full or partial lockdown and started closing educational institutions in March 2020 in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus. With educational institutions including schools physically shut down, academic activities were shifted to the distance mode of teaching and learning. Despite concerted efforts made by educational institutions to keep the learning activities intact during this period, teachers and students were compelled either to rely on limited resources such as the internet-mediated platforms for interaction, television and radio or remain unreached by all of these means.

Hardly had schools been back in place after the gradual lift of prolonged lockdown in many countries when the second wave of the pandemic brought a more deepening crisis to the fore.