Emergency Report on School Education is a wake up call on declining literacy and higher dropouts

A nationwide survey covering 15 States has found that online education is simply not working. For the past seventeen months, most primary and upper-primary schools have been closed and are working in the online mode. How effective is the teaching and the learning?

We have had plenty of anecdotal evidence. Even when there is a solo smartphone in the family it is given as priority to the student for online learning. Even with working phones or tablets, there have been connectivity or bandwidth problems. Or the lack of close engagement with the teachers. Excluding some urban elite schools, the informal impression is that the experience is highly unsatisfactory, for the students, the teachers and the parents. This informal impression has been validated by a rigorous study and a recently published report.