Covid affects education: Digital divide a concern in J&K

Only 40% students in the state have access to smartphones for their studies

While the Covid-19 pandemic made smartphones the most effective tool for education, its unavailability to 60% of school going children in Jammu and Kashmir has raised concerns about the digital divide.

A national level survey “Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-Rural 2021” conducted in September-October this year revealed that around 72% students in J&K have a smartphone at home but only 40% students have access to it for their studies.

The survey reveals that irrespective of financial constraints during the pandemic, people still went for smartphones for the education of their wards. The availability was higher among wards of well-off parents going to private schools, but the report says even illiterate parents bought mobile phones for their wards’ education.

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However, despite the closure of schools for offline classes in Kashmir for the last more than two years, the survey revealed that the majority of the students were receiving education through traditional methods.

Around 55% students did learning activities at home through traditional means, 13% of the students availed the facility of broadcast classes while 28.9% students studied online.

While schools in rest of the country were closed in March 2020 after Covid-19 pandemic, educational institutions have almost remained closed in Kashmir since August 2019 when the Center revoked the erstwhile state’s special status under Article 370 and subsequently imposed a security and communication clampdown.

The ASER-2021 has also revealed that the number of “out of school children” between the age group of 6-14 years has jumped from 1.2% in 2018 to 6% in 2021.The figures of the survey have also revealed that the enrollment of students between the age group of 6-14 years in government schools has decreased from 57% to 55%.

The report is a household survey conducted via phone in the rural areas and sampling was done from the representative sample of households from the ASER 2018 survey – the last nationwide ASER survey that was carried out in the field.

The contents of the annual report states that the survey was conducted to explore the patterns of enrollment and dropout among 5-16 year-olds in rural India besides trends in children taking paid tuition classes to aid their studies.