Due to the corona lockdown, the education of all students is being affected a lot, all over the world. At this stage, the resources available on the internet have become the integral feature of day to day life for most of the people in the world that too for Americans. Being connected to the internet is the essential factor considered more important now for most of the families with school-going children. Online connectivity has increased the usage more by ensuring that education is out front to all children regardless of their economic status. Digital tools are a key component of children’s education. Since digital devices are essential it would certainly exacerbate education and economic inequality too.
As this is the situation “Free internet access is being offered for six months” for the benefit of many disadvantaged students to study online without any discomfort. According to a survey it is found that most of the primary and secondary people are out of school yet and still learning online. But there is a concern about the digital divide where the poor people suffer a lot and miss out the online learning at various circumstances. The most common issue found among all was they were not able to afford the internet connectivity. So finally the government has come forward to offer free connectivity funded by BT and distributed by the Department for Education.
It was also found that there are families who cannot even have computer equipment/laptop or not even adequate internet access for online learning. Nearly 700,000 disadvantaged students are there, who don’t have a laptop and also cannot afford internet access and learn online. So in order to overcome the situation, the scheme funded would offer vouchers for free access to 5 million Wi-Fi hotspots and also 200,000 laptops out of which 100,000 were given to the students. Many students use the internet to do part-time jobs and earn for their learning.
Families with lower incomes who still rely on mobile connectivity would not help students with digital learning. So based on the need increasing the Government would decide further to help the pupil who really struggles a lot to afford this technological development. Soon it is expected that the scheme would offer an unlimited number of laptops to help the poor pupil. We all should remember that Today’s Children are tomorrow’s future of the world.
Digital poverty is treated as the most “significant problem” in the current situation. Now almost most of the families are struggling a lot and they give priority to Food and not Data. So many of the students are found offline (home learning) due to unaffordability for internet connectivity. The step taken forward to provide free internet access would highly benefit all the students and helps them to learn easily without any obstacle or hindrance. Moreover, these facilities are provided on the basis of pupils in schools where free meals given for moderate families with lower income.
In England, it is found that most of the secondary pupils had begun to return to school part-time. It is also brought into notice that “social distancing” means only a quarter of pupils of years 10 and 12 can be in school at any one time. It is better to stay home and continue with online learning as it is the safest and convenient way of learning.
On the whole, it is a Good thought-provoking process to educate students equally and take the education system to the next higher level.
