How COVID-19 has left India’s education sector in tatters

How COVID-19 has left India’s education sector in tatters

Thiruvananthapuram: In early March 2020, when Maria S. took a bus to her native Kottayam district from Bengaluru where she was in her second year of under-graduation at one of India's prestigious colleges, she was elated by the unexpected holiday break presented by the lockdown. More than a year later, she feels downright miserable: "My entire final year of college has been washed out, merely attending online classes. Placements are unlikely and my class does not even know when we will have the final exams and whether they will be online", she says. Maria is not alone in her angst at having lost what should have been an enjoyable and defining year of her life. Roughly 28 million students are enrolled in various under graduate programmes in India, who are all facing various degrees of uncertainty. Add the school student numbers and you get the Himalayan proportion of youth and children of India who are the most scarred-for-life owing to the coronavirus-related disruptions. A decade ago, India's last census in 2011 had revealed that the nation had 315 million students, the largest student population in the world, and a number that nearly equals the entire population of the US. All