Will Students Go Back to Schools?

Lahore, 10th June: Very unfortunately, after the diffusion of COVID’s phase in Pakistan, educational institutions have taken a move towards destruction.

On February 26, 2020, in Karachi, when the first case was reported, within a short period of time it spread over all the country which only started dragging lockdown for education sectors.

Will students go back to school is a question that needs to be answered, because after a long and back-to-back closure of institutions affected students’ study a lot.

However, it seems in Pakistan to prevent COVID-19 is to impose lockdown on education institutions. But, it’s the authorities’ misunderstanding because our literacy rate in 2019 was 60% but in 2020 it cut back 2% and reached 58%. If further, we kept acting similarly then situations could get worse.

These long breaks killed many students’ interest. In the first break, one of my friends left his study, in the third wave another friend did the same. When I asked them the cause they said after every two three months we face a long break, we became sick of this act.

Similarly, there are many other students who are suffering the same. This is increasing our drop-out ratio.

It is not denied that education holds immense acceptance for any nation’s development. Schools were closed almost whole the year and now on the pretend of summer vacation many others continued to be off.

During the closure of colleges and universities, students were shifted toward online classes which were not acceptable by any chance.

Firstly, the internet was everyone’s first issue because several parts of the country have no internet access. Except for the unavailability of the internet, the online learning system has several other demerits.

Students lose their face-to-face interaction with teachers and can’t focus on the materials which teacher delivers.

Secondly, most of the students are not digitalized and do not have a computer or laptop. The government only focused on the university level students and issued online classes for them but almost 40% of students are in the primary section, what about them?

These breaks have calamitous consequences and are revolting for every student. Other countries have suggested various methods in order to prevent coronavirus but Pakistan seems the only country which is stopping coronavirus via imposing a shutdown on education sectors.

However, closing schools, colleges and universities certify that people limit their interactions with each other. But despite this, communications and gatherings are as same as they were before.

It’s really great to take precautions and save your health but we have to take care of our education, too.

Education minister should cut down these long implemented breaks and bring a new, big and better change in educational institutions in order to continue them.

Meraj Ghulam
The writer is a FA student at the Atta Shad Degree College Turbat, (Kech).

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