In a country where students see education as debt bondage and parents treat schools as a place to dump their children, it is no secret that the lockdowns have brought much turmoil and little relief for the education sector. As a result of the closure of schools, many students have started believing that they can get away from formal education.

What we have in the name of distant learning is mostly an under planned, poorly executed chain of voice notes and voice calls. This haphazard ‘system’ has been left entirely to the discretion of underfunded, often technophobic teachers. In an online routine, resulting from the closure of schools, many public institutions and low-budget private schools have sought to keep students busy with assignments. However, these assignments are limited to worksheets, rote learning and homework that requires minimal effort on part of the teachers. Many students were sent home right in the middle of the term. These students are now living in constant uncertainty regarding examinations. Only a few institutions have managed to push teachers onto a digital pedestal and encourage students to continue learning online.

Online learning has not only been tough for students, but also proved to be challenging for the teachers involved. Their routine was disturbed, their burden increased and their anxiety multiplied. There were online assignments to be marked and voice notes to be sent with the knowledge that the same would have to be repeated in the class room. Above all, students gained access to the teacher’s personal numbers from WhatsApp groups to ask redundant questions at odd hours.

Even once schools re-open, getting back to school is not going to mean getting back to the education system we had a year ago.

In Pakistan, students almost never have the opportunity to decide what to study, nor do they idealise schools as a place worth visiting. After repeated interruptions in the learning process, students who didn’t find education worthy of their interest in the first place, have now lost the little interest that an on-campus education had maintained. Even once schools re-open, getting back to school is not going to mean getting back to the education system we had a year ago. Preparing students to receive education in a disciplined environment is going to be quite an ordeal now that they have developed a taste for studying from the comfort of their homes.

Reopening of schools seems to be the only way to get back to the method of delivery educators and learners in the country are used to. In the currently employed, online delivery of education only a few have access to applications such as WhatsApp –used for sending and receiving assignments, both images and pdf; Google – now used as a virtual classroom; and Zoom, a free video/voice conference call of 45 minutes. One of the two most important things that seem to have come out of online education is that unequal access to digital infrastructure has further deepened the education gap in the country.

A year ago, every other child going to school in the morning was bound to sit with a home tutor, visit a tuition centre or learn in an academy in the evening. Children were tightly knit in the learning cycle which needed little attention from parents. With the liability of teaching, or supervising the children during online classes, falling solely on the shoulders of parents, whether they are educated or otherwise, has exposed the second most important thing: the need to develop a culture where educational training and moral upbringing of a child is shared by the teacher and the parent.

What we have lost in the last eleven months cannot be recovered. Though the online delivery of education has its faults, it is still better to have something than nothing at all.

The writer is an Assistant Professor of English at FGEIs, Ministry of Defence, and also has a YouTube channel — Learn English with Fatima. She can be reached at learnenglishwithfatima@gmail.com.