When School Isn't A Screen For 1st Time

Gurgaon: Pratik and Nancy walked in gingerly and took in the surroundings, wide-eyed. The voices around them were familiar but nothing else about the day was.

- Sagrika Kissu

The two 6-year-olds were experiencing a classroom that wasn’t on a mobile phone screen for the first time, 17 months after they were enrolled into school.

Class hadn’t begun with a mobile notification but the gong of a bell, parents weren’t around for a cuddle and an untimely toffee, and there was no option to switch off video and stretch out on the chair. This isn’t how they had known school.

On Monday, scores of kids got their first taste of school life after classes 1-3 were called back to campus across the state.

Junior classes had opened this March briefly, for barely a couple of weeks and with very low attendance, before the Covid wave struck. Since the pandemic shut down campuses in March 2020, this was the first full-fledged return to school.

Concern over big learning gaps due to prolonged online classes