The Jharkhand branch of the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, an NGO that also works for strengthening literacy campaign, has been running over 200 community learning centres for motivating children of underprivileged sections for pursuing education.

This is expected to revive the learning process of such children, particularly those in primary schools that are closed since lockdown was imposed in the country and unlikely to reopen soon.

“When we conducted a survey in August (2021) for assessing the impact of closure of primary schools due to the pandemic, we found that children belonging to underprivileged sections of the society were getting detached from education,” informed BGVS national general secretary Kashinath Chatterjee, explaining the reason for opening those centres.

They had surveyed the status of education among children of 5,118 households, mostly belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes, in 877 villages of 17 districts of the state, he further informed.

“We found 93.6 per cent students couldn’t attend online classes regularly as they had to depend on other members of their family for mobile phones that were often not available,” Chatterjee said, adding even those who could manage phones faced problems with availability of sufficient data and network issues, promoting 93.1 per cent guardians feeling learning standard of their children had fallen.

“Things were no better even when we undertook a detailed assessment of the situation in five districts — Giridih, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Palamau and Dumka — in November (2021) and found that 96.6 per cent children and 98 per cent guardians preferred reopening of schools and offline classes, Chatterjee further informed, adding they were now running 210 community learning centres in as many villages in those five districts.

There were 230 volunteers who ran those centres, he said, adding two volunteers worked in some centres that had more children.

“It’s a satisfaction to see those children getting reconnected to studies through these community learning centres,” said Dil Mohammad Algundia who, besides teaching, supervises a couple of centres in Giridih district.

Classes are held wherever they get some space, be it a rooftop or beside an agriculture field, he further informed, adding the number of students, studying in classes between 1 and 8, at each centre varied between 25 and 70.

“To make it interesting, I try to teach them basics through some games and find it very effective,” said Malati Soren of Manikbad village in Giridih district who has a masters degree and works as a volunteer.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched Padhe Bharat, a 100-day programme for promoting learning capability of children across the country.

“We welcome it as we had also demanded the same,” Chatterjee said when the issue was raised, adding it was a huge task to revive learning habit among such children and needed support of all concerned.