Closure of educational institutes: NCHD study reveals impact of lockdown on students, studies

ISLAMABAD: The closure of educational institutes as a result of lockdown imposed by the government to contain the spread of the Covid-19 has increased 13.40 percent dropout of students from schools and affected the studies of 57.50 percent of students.

Revealed a study carried out by the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) in collaboration with Islamic Rescue Committee (IRC-IVAP) titled, "Coordinated Gap Analysis (CGA)" released here on Tuesday.

The report further highlighted that the source of income of 89.90 percent of people was negatively affected by the pandemic and the lockdown.

The NCHD and partner organisation conducted coordinated GAP analysis in 41 districts covering 16,400 household.

The sample was distributed to urban and rural areas, 20 villages from each district were covered including 90 key informant interviews.

The report depicts that during the lockdown period, 18.90 percent people availed health services from government hospitals, 37.60 percent from private clinics, 24.20 percent self medication, 2.20 percent from homeopathic doctors, and 15.60 percent consulted local practitioners.

The report further said that 20 percent people caught Covid-19 from the household patients, 51 percent member faced stigma due to lockdown.

Moreover symptoms of aggressive behaviour, sadness, depression, substance abuse, anti-social, sleeplessness, and less willing to take care of the siblings were observed during the situation.

Talking about the impact towards education report reveals that different modes were opted by the children, 6.2 percent utilised Government Tele School Session, 8.40 percent opted online school arrangements, 7.40 percent used assignment based tasks, and 69.2 percent availed self study with parents.

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the biggest global crises like the Second World War, as it impacted the economy and all other sectors including health and education.

The world is observing a new normal and seems to be adopting it.

Speaking on the occasion, Farah Hamid Khan, federal secretary, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training said the country's human development index rankings were very less in number, and there was a need to create emergency in the country on all the sectors of human development index.

The Education Secretary further said the Ministry of Education and Professional Training had taken varied initiatives to provide quality education to the children and was working on Education, Policy and Research for the data collection, research for policy analysis to enhance the role of provinces in education.

Dr Amirullah Marwat, chairman NCHD said, the Covid-19 pandemic precautionary measures were not being adopted by the people in general and it caused increasing cases in the country.

It is important that people should be aware of adopting the guidelines and adopt social distancing practices to protect each other from this pandemic.

He further said "the NCHD is thankful to IRC for joining hands with us for making this analysis happen and this report would provide an insight to the decision-makers in developing sustainable initiatives."

The study can help us a lot in devising new techniques and strategies for better and faster learning as a lot of time had already been wasted due to this pandemic. It would also facilitate to develop a policy in the future to improve teaching learning process in such contexts.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020