When schools in West Bengal reopened for offline classes around the middle of February this year after a pandemic-forced closure of nearly two years, Swarupa Mondal Gomes, Headmistress of Kolkata’s Lee Memorial Girls’ High School, found that several of the students hadn’t joined back.
“Even one child lost and left untraced is a guilt upon us. The thought of what might have happened to them, their safety and security — it worries us. These children come from the least privileged backgrounds of society, and them dropping out points to our responsibility towards society as educators,” said Dr. Mondal Gomes, whose concern is representative of that faced by government-aided schools across Kolkata and West Bengal.
While for students of private schools, the mode of education merely shifted from the offline to online mode once lockdowns began to be enforced due to COVID-19, the students of government-run schools, with hardly any access to smartphones or networks, had no such luxury. For them, the prolonged closure meant a prolonged break from learning, leading to many dropping out. Lee Memorial Girls’ High School alone has lost at least 25 students.
