Telangana Government mulls using DD to reach out to students

Hyderabad: As the Covid-19 cases are on rise, talks are underway in the Education Department of Telangana to launch classes on Doordarshan channel as it can be accessible to the students in remote areas too.

It is already late for the schools to start its academic year and it would be challenging for the government schools students to begin online classes as not every student has access to the internet and a computer which are essential for online classes.

"Engaging school children with academics turned out to be a challenging thing due to Coronavirus crisis. Somehow few government schools have started online classes for the tenth class students as a kick start initiative. But, we have observed only around 30 percent of the school students were able to attend the class and rest of them ended up complaining lack of access to the internet and others," said S Jagannath, AD, District Education Office, Hyderabad Urban.

To ensure a productive approach, we are trying to launch the academics through Doordarshan beginning with 30 to 45 minutes session per subject, he added.

"We have recorded classes already and it's really not new to launch classes through Doordarshan. If we had started it before a month, by this time we would have finished a quarter of syllabus and it would have helped students in learning the topics in detail. There is an immediate need to launch the classes as soon as possible, if not, the students might face struggle to grasp the content," said Prasad Ambati, Principal, Government Hight School, Kapra.

This move would bridge the growing gap between urban and rural students and neighboring state Karnataka has already implemented the launch of classes through Doordarshan and telecasting half an hour classes for 8, 9 and 10 covering eight subjects in four hours, classes would be commenced from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. There are also chances that, Telangana government would be following a similar pattern with mild changes.

However, the students of government schools located in the urban cities are excited for the online classes from August second week. "Students are excited for online classes. Teachers have been trained to conduct online classes and webinars. Classes would begin from August 16 and the official announcement is awaited," said G Prabhaker, In-charge, Government High School. So far, officials are directed at a local level to identify children who cannot access to Television and are making arrangements to combine or form a group in flexible areas to share television classes with their peers.