Covid-19 Impact: Students Must Be Promoted Without Exams, Says Former HRD Minister Kapil Sibal
“Let us not waste a year for young students, for them it may be a great loss,” Kapil Sibal says.
Students across Indian educational institutes need to be promoted to the next class without exams to balance out the irregularities of online teaching, said Kapil Sibal.
“We need to be a little bit more generous, it’s not their fault. It’s no one’s fault. We need to think of solutions that will balance things out,” the former Human Resource Development minister told The Quint in an interview.
This comes as the 40-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has disrupted school, colleges and advanced learning institutes across India, among other activities. While other developed countries have managed to shift classes online, India is not technologically prepared to do the same, he said.
India’s Bharat Net, despite six years of the present government being in power, is still not complete, the Congress party member said. “Even if some institutes in urban India manage online classes, we don’t have the technology for interactive learning across the country—especially in rural India where resources are limited,” he explained. Learning becomes even more difficult when it comes to applied and practical sciences and skill development, he said.
Students need to be promoted to the next class till India figures out how to continue education through distance learning in a way that is balanced for all, he said. Till then, “let us not waste a year for young students, for them it may be a great loss”.
Watch the full conversation here: