Rajasthan: Parents unhappy with child panel online class rules

JAIPUR: Guidelines issued by the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights to schools for conducting online classes have been termed incomplete/insufficient by private school principals, experts and parents.
Most principals and educators feel that the guidelines miss out on advocating activity-based learning, advisory for parents, no two-day offs and does not focus on measures to reduce the screen time for children.
“The authorities have to curate and create creative teaching-learning methodology as it is seen that the lecture method is leading to boredom. It is the uncharted territory for everyone and we have realised that attention span on the teaching of a child during online classes is a bit more difficult than teaching in the classrooms. It is extremely important to add an element of humour in the class to keep it from getting dry and boring,” said Urvashi Warman, principal of Palace School.
Stressing the need of having an advisory for parents on how to handle their wards during and after online classes, Lata Rawat, mentor of Cambridge Court group of schools, said online classes cannot be compared with classroom teaching.
“Parents have to play an active role in ensuring that their wards follow the online class with discipline and share the feedback with the teachers regularly,” said Rawat. She further advised that pre-primary and primary kids are having the best of the animation-related content. “The classes have to be a mix of audio and visual content added with some characters to make a direct connection with the students. A teacher asking students to repeat after her/him has long become an outdated form of teaching,” said Rawat.
Objecting on the 30-40-minute duration of the classes, Anjana Kumar, principal of Rukmani Birla Modern High School, said every class should be inter-spread with a breathing activity or ask the students jump up and down to make them feel comfortable.