HRD Ministry announced guidelines for online classes by schools and recommended a cap on number of sessions and duration of sessions in a day for students. The guidelines have been framed by the ministry after consulting with people in education field, following concerns raised by parents about schools doing Online Classes. like regular schools, which has increased children's mobile and laptop screen time after the COVID-19 Pandemic mandated a shift to online classroom teaching from classroom as schools remained shut for more than four months .
HRD ministry had issued guideline named "Pragyata", has recommended that duration for online classes for pre-primary students should not be for more than 30 minutes, otherwise it will impact the health of kids.
For classes 1 to 8, the HRD Ministry has recommended two online sessions of up to 45 minutes each while for classes 9 to 12, four sessions of 30-45 minutes duration have been recommended .
"The COVID-19 pandemic has led to closure of preschools and schools across country and has impacted over 240 million children of the country who are enrolled in schools. Extended school closures due to COVID may cause loss of learning.
Online education has completely changed the learning method around the world. In order to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, schools need to be innovative in teaching children online and need to remodel and reimagine the way teaching and learning have happened so far, but will also need to introduce a suitable method of delivering quality education through a healthy mix of schooling at home and schooling at school HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' said.
He said that the guidelines have been made with a focus on online education for students who are at home due to current challenges we are facing due to COVID 19.
"The guidelines have been developed from the perspective of learners, with a focus on online, blended, digital education for students who are presently at home due to the lockdown. These guidelines on digital education will provide a pointer for moving head in right direction forward online education to enhance the quality of education," Nishank added.
Universities and schools across the country have been shut since March 16, when the Centre announced a countrywide classroom shutdown as part of measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. A nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, which came into effect the next day.
While the State and Central government has largely eased restrictions, schools and colleges continue to remain closed due to fear of community spread among students.
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