PANAJI: The pandemic has caused unusual delays in the college academic schedule in the state, resulting in full-fledged lectures being conducted in summer for the first time. Cramped classrooms without proper ventilation and power failures have led to teachers and students taking ill in some cases. This has left college teachers seeking truncating of the syllabus to bring the academic schedule back on track.
“We are seeing students and teachers getting affected by dehydration and low blood pressure. A teacher with a heart ailment had to go on leave for treatment and a masters student fainted last week after climbing three flights of stairs to her classroom in the heat. We have 60 students in most classrooms and lectures go on for long hours from 8.30am to 1.45pm. The situation will get worse in May as the temperatures rise further,” said a Salcete college teacher.
In pre-Covid times, the colleges in the state would end their academic year in April, but it will end in July this year. The Goa University had to declare a 15-day break in February due to the rise in Covid cases, as a result teaching in colleges will continue through the summer months with the vacation scheduled in August.
“The college teachers and student community are facing hardships due to the change in the academic term,” said University and College Teachers’ Association of Goa president Anthony Rodrigues.
“March, April and May are extremely hot and unbearable for the students to concentrate on their studies, which affects the teaching-learning process badly. We need to look at the measures taken by the Goa board to keep the academic schedule on track at the secondary and higher secondary level.”
Teachers from some colleges said that only principals were consulted while deciding about the academic schedule.
“There are two possible solutions — one is reducing the lecture time so that the discomfort of being consistently stranded together for long hours can be overcome. Maybe give additional breaks so that students and staff can refresh and stay hydrated. Secondly, as we are close to finishing the syllabus by the end of May, a few topics if possible can be truncated. Taking all stakeholders' views is equally important,” said associate professor Smita Bhandare Kamat.
Teachers said that students’ attention spans have already gone down as they are used to attending sessions online during the pandemic and the heat is further affecting students’ concentration in class. Except for the classrooms of self-financed (non-aided) courses, none of the others are air-conditioned in the state’s colleges.
“Teachers get a break, but students have to sit continuously for classes. In some cases, arts students with different combinations of subjects have lectures from 9am till 5pm on some days. There are frequent power failures and no cross-ventilation in classrooms. This affects productivity. One of the reasons the university was forced to delay schedule further was students’ unions protesting for delay in final year students’ exam last year citing the pandemic,” said a college teacher from South Goa.
