Education has a key role in everyone’s life as without it, a nation’s growth can be at risk. However, during Covid-19, kids were not allowed to go to schools because most of the educational institutes were closed. Education was affected badly in the pandemic and some schools tried to facilitate students through an online learning system.
Do you really think online learning was beneficial for every student? Most of the rural areas still do not have access to the internet and poor families who strive for bread cannot afford expensive mobiles or laptops. So, low poverty families suffered a lot in the pandemic and here, we have unveiled some crucial facts:
Technology Issues
Everyone is not aware of the use of technology and low-income people do not pay much attention to such things. Rural or less privileged areas do not have easy access to the internet and this is a reason that students couldn’t attend online classes.
A stable connection is crucial to attend classes but continuous disruption can ruin the class time. People were stuck in their homes and students missed their lectures and ultimately, their grades were affected badly.
Unavailability of Computers at Home
For online classes, the availability of computers is mandatory but low-income people usually do not have computers in the house. So, when schools asked for online classes, poor people were unable to reap the pros of this facility.
It ultimately created a huge gap between the education of the rich and poor. Regulatory institutions did not provide a basic facility of laptops to poor people so their education was affected badly.
Wastage of Time
During Covid-19, the crucial time of students was wasted because low poverty families had to strive for their basic necessities. The main focus of poor people was to earn bread and butter and sometimes even their children were also involved in earning a livelihood.
This caused wastage of time and it was not a matter of a few days only but a complete academic year of poor students wasted.
Pandemic Created an Education Gap
Now, students who are back to their school and universities feel a gap in studies and they are striving to get back to their normal routine. Apart from it, rich and poor people are not on the same educational page now.
Rich students enjoyed the perks of the internet and they attended their online classes regularly while poor people were not privileged enough. Some Jewish charities raised voices for this purpose and they provided laptops to poor people but more efforts were needed for it.
Poor People Lost their Jobs
Poor people were unable to pay their fees for online classes as the many lost their jobs and it was not easy for them to afford online lectures. If we roughly calculate the total expenditure of online education, it actually costs high as people have to buy the right devices, get a stable internet connection, and pay the fee.
So, total expenses are not easy to afford for the less privileged. People had to strive for finding a new job and it created a lot of problems.
Complexed Environment at Homes
In addition to the expense of having the right materials to learn from, doing school at home could also cause some problems. Some people, even if they had a device, did not have a place to work. In order to be able to concentrate properly, you need to have a quiet place to work. Imagine a family that lives in a small house, with everyone home all day. Trying to concentrate and work could be very difficult because of this. Additionally, for many people, just having to stay home for long periods of time brought out a slew of mental health problems such as depression. Being confined with a family member who is going through a very hard time mentally in a small space could affect the student.
Students Got Dismissed
Reports have unveiled that students who were unable to pay a fee for online classes got dismissed from schools and universities. Now, these students have to take admission in different institutes and ultimately, educational goals are not the same as before. People have suffered a lot due to Covid-19 and unlike rich people, low poverty families struggled even harder.
Management of educational institutes should understand the fact that the poor class was unable to pay a heavy fee. If universities retain less privileged students for a current academic year, they can surely observe a bright performance from their side. In short, this is how Covid-19 affected the education of less privileged people.