Parents have started returning to offices leaving children on their own at home to fiddle with electronic devices or at times miss online classes for want of a device.

In several homes, children have been missing out on classes because at times they cannot resolve a technical glitch or they want to skip class or they do not have a device.

Many parents have to take their laptops or smartphones with them as they return to office and not everyone has a device to spare.

Metro had reported how online classes had created a shortage of devices in homes and parents and siblings were sharing devices to get their individual work done.

In several schools, parents have written to the authorities about the problem, which they feel will intensify in the coming weeks and months as many start going to offices.

“Parents have written to us saying they won’t be able to monitor their children during online classes as they have to return to work; some have said they will need their gadgets at work,” Kavneet Khullar, principal of Akshar, said. “We have had a teachers’ meeting and we will try to resolve the problem by talking to parents individually.”

A doctor couple have to leave their four-year-old daughter to attend online classes under the supervision of their nine-year-old son. “There have been occasions when my son called to say that my daughter was not sitting for her online class and they ended up fighting. My daughter did not attend the class… the situation is beyond my control,” psychiatrist S. Das said.

Priyanka Kar and her husband resumed office a few weeks back. Kar has to leave for work at 8am and her son’s classes start at 8.30am. She has had to make arrangements to get her mother to their house every morning.

“We are facing a lot of issues because my son, a Class III student, is not old enough to handle the desktop on his own and my mother, too, is not well-versed with computers,” she said.

Kar works in a cement manufacturing company.

Net connectivity has been a problem in many homes in the aftermath of Cyclone Amphan.

Kar said she bought her mother a smartphone to send study links for her son. It also acts as a back-up device in case the Wi-Fi is slow, she said.

Schools generally send a meeting ID and password to a parent’s phone a few minutes before class. “I have to send the link so that they can log in. It’s not been very easy,” Kar said.

But unlike Kar, many parents haven’t been able to afford another phone or a laptop in such trying times. “We have received requests from parents that their children won’t be able to submit the day’s assignment by the scheduled deadline (2pm) because both parents are at work. We have allowed them to submit the assignments by evening after they return home,” Sanchita Biswas, principal of St Paul’s Mission School, said.

At Sri Sri Academy, the school is holding classes on Saturdays for the benefit of those missing classes on a weekday.

Parents are worried about leaving their children with electronic devices on their own with possible access to various age-inappropriate sites.

“I might not be sitting with my son throughout the day while he is attending classes but he knows that I am around and he cannot visit a site, which is not suitable for him,” the mother of a Class IX student said.