COVID-19 pandemic: Parents bypass pre-primary school education for kids

In recent developments, reports state that parents are now enrolling their children directly to primary school, skipping pre-primary education.

Moreover, a year after schools across the state of Maharashtra halted their education process due to the outbreak of the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown, preschool education, which caters to students between the ages of two and six years reportedly is the worst hit. As a result, several preschools, especially the standalone private ones, had to shut down as they could not afford to bear the costs of teachers and the infrastructure due to very low enrolments.

On the other hand, as a large number of parents are still not enrolling children in a proper preschool of pre-primary programme, many companies have started offering short term bridge courses which are becoming popular among parents. However, experts have warned against such short term courses stating that proper pre-primary education is of utmost importance for the development of a child.

Meanwhile, in the first 10 days of March, the state had conducted drives across its 36 districts to identify students who have fallen out of the formal education system during the pandemic year. There are 1.7 crore children aged between 3 and 14 in Maharashtra. The data further shows that 7,806 children in the 6-14 age group had never been enrolled in school and 17,397 had been counted as dropouts due to irregular attendance in the year 2020-21.

Therefore, it can be ascertained that the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely detrimental to academic education. Moreover, these closures not only impact students, teachers, and families but have far-reaching economic and societal consequences.