Why India’s poorest children are falling further behind

Ten-year-old Laxmi may never go to school again. When the first wave of Covid-19 hit India in early 2020, her school closed its doors and now her parents can’t afford to send her.

Laxmi attended a nearby private school for £21 ($26) a year, which the family funded through loans from relatives.

They chose the school, which has since reopened, partly because they feared it would not be safe to travel to the state-funded school in the next village.

Her parents also had concerns about the quality of teaching and the lack of restrooms in the public school.

“I have three daughters. Laxmi is the eldest. We had thought that life would be different for her after graduation than for us.

“Although my husband and I hardly earn anything, I didn’t want my children to lead the same life as me,” says her mother Rekha Saroj.

While the pandemic has fueled a spate of new online education platforms aimed at democratizing education for Indian children, these resources have simply not been accessible to the country’s most disadvantaged households.

“The digitization of studies may be good, but what about us? How are we supposed to have a better future without access to money or the internet?” says Ms. Saroj.

There are several digital education programs for children in government schools, including DIKSHA, an online service for schools with content in 32 languages.

While well-intentioned, these efforts appear to have had minimal impact on children while schools have been closed during the pandemic. According to India’s Annual Status of Education Report (Aser), in 2021 only 40% of enrolled children had received any type of study materials or activities from their school in the week of the report’s survey.

The situation was most acute for the youngest children as they tended to have the least access to technology. According to the report, nearly a third of five to eight year olds do not have access to a smartphone to support learning at home.

“The proportion of families who had contact with teachers was heavily skewed towards better-off families,” the report found.

“That [Indian education] The system is largely designed for privileged children, the easy winners in this uneven race,” explains Jean Drèze, a Belgian-born economist focusing on India.

“Schools were closed for almost two years – under pressure from wealthy parents who were unconcerned about the learning gap because their children were learning online at home.

“Children without access to online education have been more or less let down by the school system.” He says while India’s schools are now reopening, “far too little is being done to help children left behind” to fill the gap.

More technology of business:

So what, if anything, could technology do to close this widening gap?

Mihir Gupta is co-founder of Teachmint, an online platform for teachers to teach, distribute materials and message students.

According to Mr. Gupta, the service reaches ten million teachers and students in 5,000 cities and communities.

However, he recognizes the significant challenges of reaching students in poorer areas where internet connections may not be reliable.

“We recognized early on that the differences in internet bandwidth in different parts of India posed a challenge to reach more and more educators,” he says. As a result, Teachmint’s service has been optimized to work with slower internet connections and on mobile devices – rather than laptops and desktop computers.

Still, Anjela Taneja, who runs the inequality campaign for charity Oxfam India, says much more needs to be done urgently.

“Even in families [with] Access to high-tech or low-tech tools made it difficult for children to learn remotely,” she says.

A “conducive environment” for home learning is often lacking, she adds, with girls in particular suffering as they often do household chores alongside studying, while boys are “preferred” to handing devices.

The government says it is supporting rural areas with BharatNet, a program that brings faster internet connections to rural areas.

The program, launched in 2012, brought broadband connections to 52,567 government schools, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of Education told the BBC.

It also said schools that are still waiting to be hooked up can use state-funded television and radio services and a host of other educational services.

Shiv Kumar works for Oxfam in disadvantaged areas of Uttar Pradesh. His job is to ensure that more children attend school regularly.

“It’s a sad situation in Indian villages. It’s a challenge to convince parents to send their children to school,” he says.

Many of the homes he visits either don’t have an internet connection or don’t have a smartphone at home.

To help, he has started a so-called “Mohalla” course. Mr Kumar will visit a home and invite children to come along and give lessons to anyone who shows up.

Using his smartphone, he shows the children the Hindi alphabet, numbers and other teaching aids.

This type of supplementary schooling is becoming more common in rural India, providing two to three hours of extra tuition per week, but relies on the help of community volunteers.

“We’re talking about digitizing education, but how is that possible for village parents with limited resources?” he asks.

There are many children who feel left behind. Sivani, 16, from Uttar Pradesh fears her window of opportunity may have closed. She finished school at the age of ten.

“I wanted to study but didn’t have the means to fulfill my dream,” she says. “My parents think working at home and taking care of the family is more important than an education.

“I’m not the only one. A lot of girls in my village don’t study… how will life change if we don’t study?” she asks.