The School Education Department has decided to broadcast radio classes from All India Radio (AIR) for the students of 5th to 8th standards from Wednesday.
The decision has been taken to avoid the academic loss of the students amid the closure of schools in view of the spike in COVID-19 cases across J&K.
The move also comes amid the government decision to put on hold the community classes for the students in far off areas due to the restrictions imposed by the authorities in view of the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.
The School Education Department he earlier decided to prioritise setting up of community schools for the children up to class 12th who do not have access to internet and smart phones and thus remain unavailable to attend the online classes.
However, later the decision was put on hold to avoid gathering of students in thee community classes.
Amid this, the students of far off areas including Gurez, Machill, Keran and other villages in Uri area were deprived of availing benefits of the online as well as offline community classes due to non-availability of internet facilities and restriction on establishing community schools.
The Director of School Education Kashmir TasaduqHussain Mir Tuesday notified a schedule of radio classes which would be broadcast for the students from class 5th to 8th from May 26.
The initiative would benefit the students living in remote areas having no access to internet.
As per the schedule notified by the DSEK, the radio classes will be broadcasted from 10 am to 10:30 am for 8th class students, 11:30 am to 12 noon for 7th class students followed by another radio class from 12 noon to 12.30 pm for 6th class students and 3:30 pm to 4 pm for 5th standard students.
The idea about holding radio and tele classes was started last year by the School Education Department under ‘classroom at your home’ initiative for the school children who were confined to their homes due to COVID-19 lockdown.
The initiative was taken to keep the students in loop with curriculum-based studies.
This year, the department has now decided to start radio classes in phase one from May 25 while the tele classes for left-out classes – 9th to 12th – would be started from June 1.
“As of now radio classes will be telecast for class 5th to 8th students while tele classes will be telecast from June 1 for students of 9th to 12th classes,” Director School Education Kashmir TasaduqHussain Mir said.
He said the radio and TV classes would be recorded for further use of the students in far off areas.
“We will record the radio and tele classes which will be later distributed among the teachers posted in these remote areas so that the students can get benefitted by this,” he said.
The government has closed all the educational institutions for offline academic activities in J&K in view of the surge in the COVID-19 cases and directed the schools, colleges and universities to switch to online mode of education.
Greater Kashmir had already reported that the department was working out modalities to start radio and tele-classes for the students.
“The video classes will likely be telecasted after May 20. We will also start radio classes at particular time slots for students who can be benefited with such facilities,” Administrative Secretary, School Education Department B K Singh earlier told Greater Kashmir.