ED: Maintaining the quality of education

With the coronavirus pandemic shutting down schools and universities across the country, it is imperative that we formulate a nationwide plan that ensures not only that education is accessible to everyone but also that the quality of education is maintained.

As such, online education and the way it is disseminated has become of the utmost importance, as teachers and students alike come to terms with this new normal.

Of foremost importance in such a situation is ensuring that students and teachers alike have access to the technologies necessary for carrying out online classes in an effective and efficient way, without which, any success in this regard is a fool’s errand.

The newness of the current situation also necessitates proper training for teachers and students alike, as some of these online tools remain unfamiliar to a significant percentage of stakeholders within the education sector.

In a recent conversation with the Dhaka Tribune, Scholastica Ltd Managing Director Madiha Murshed highlighted the need for online classes to be interactive if they are to be effective.

Indeed, instead of focusing on when schools should reopen, a better approach would be to focus on how they should reopen, so that children and their families are not put at any health risk.

There can be no “one-size-fits-all” solution in this current scenario, and governmental policy needs to reflect such an understanding. By catering to the needs of students as well as teachers, and by prioritizing their health, we can come up with online learning solutions which truly ensure that the education of our youth suffer as little damage as possible during the pandemic.