With a view of academic loss of more than six months triggered by the covid 19 pandemic lockdown, the State government is planning to implement bridge courses for students from Class 1 to 8, who do not have board exams for the promotion to the next standard. This would help about 27 lakh government and aided school students from these classes, said official sources.
The lockdown highly affects the school functioning across the State, which were closed since March, and authorities do not have a schedule on reopening the educational institutions till date. The students from Classes 1 to 8 who do not have board exams would have fewer academic sessions. This results in backlog in comparison to the private schools who are undergoing online classes. “So government school students would have very less knowledge in the subjects of their standards. Therefore, to ensure that they have required knowledge, the bridge courses will be introduced before promoting them to the next level,” informed a senior official from the School Education Department.
The short-term course focusing on important topics from the syllabus have been planned. “Now, discussions are going on about creating contents for the bridge courses, which could be easily understood by the children, so that they would be confident when promoted to the next class,” the official said. Various academicians and experts are pouring suggestions to the authorities to create the training content for the bridge course, he said. He added no test or examination will be held at the end of the course. Teachers would also be trained in conducting bridge courses, said the official, also the regular classes would be conducted simultaneously. “Course materials will be printed and distributed to all the State-run schools,” he added.
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