While many private schools in Chennai are conducting live online classes for their senior grades and students who will be taking up the board exams next year, it is a mix of pre-recorded lessons and live lessons for primary students.

P.G. Subramanian, principal, Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram, said the school is very clear about not having live online classes for children up to class 6. “We have drawn up a schedule and based on that, students are sent pre-recorded video lessons as well as worksheets. To ensure that we don’t burden them with too much material, they are given content pertaining to not more than one subject and two extra-curricular activities every day.” Parents have been instructed to share the content with the children at their own convenience and feedback has been promising so far, Mr Subramanian said.

At Bala Vidya Mandir, students have live online lessons for four hours every day of which one hour is an optional lesson. “However, we do understand if children are unable to attend classes at any given point and a recording of each live lesson is sent to all the children at the end of the day. The interactive engagement that children get from live lessons is the need of the hour,” said Srinivasa Raghavan, principal, BVM. He further said that both students and teachers have steadily adapted to technology in the last few months.

Ensuring access to pre-recorded content and worksheets is something many parents prefer as well. “The teachers generally give us time till the end of the day to complete the worksheets or activities and send them in. For working parents in particular who need to sit with their children and guide them with regard to watching a lesson or completing an assignment, this is much more flexible,” said M. Divya, whose daughter is a class 3 student.

Parents of children who are in kindergarten and classes 1 to 3 at Shree Niketan Schools, are sent short video guides, along with the pre-recorded video lessons for the children. “We need to ensure that parents have some guidance on how to engage the children with the video lessons we are sending,” said Vishnucharan Panneerselvam, school correspondent.

While schools have ramped up their student engagement from the start of this month, there is a need to carefully curate the content and learning plan for younger students. The Tamil Nadu School Education Department is, however, yet to introduce guidelines for online learning in the State.

“The focus should be more on developing skills and not just having online classes or recorded videos given to students in lower primary classes. Even if they are given worksheets or assignments, these need a lot of research and work by the teachers which is why a well-structured plan for younger students is necessary,” said Minoo Aggarwal, principal, DAV Public School, Velachery.