Teachers working with a city NGO have started visiting children in slums who in the past seven or eight months have picked up several things from online classes, but not writing skills.

Many among them are first-generation learners and hence, cannot turn to their parents for help with their assignments.

Their parents are contractual labourers, rickshaw-pullers and domestic help. Most of them cannot read or write and these children, in the age group of four to six, are solely dependent on the teachers.

As the centres of Calcutta Rescue had to be shut down because of the Covid pandemic, the children were stuck at home with no guidance till May, when the NGO started online classes.

“Over seven months they have learnt rhymes or songs during these classes. But when it came to writing, many were unable to pick up,” said Ananya Chatterjee, the school administrator at Calcutta Rescue.

In December, the teachers started going to the slums on a bus. And classes are being held for an hour, four days a week, on the bus.

Children attend classes on Calcutta Rescue’s bus in Bagbazar and Nimtala Telegraph picture

The teachers are visiting around 12 slums in areas like Girish Park, Mechua, Nimtala, Tallah Park and Bagbazar.

To maintain physical distance, each seat in the bus doubles as a study desk for one child. “We have been teaching them online for so many months, but we need to see whether they are recognising numbers, letters and absorbing what we are teaching,” said Chatterjee.

For writing skill, children have to be told how to trace and how to hold a pencil, and for this proper guidance through in-person sessions is needed.

“Most of their parents don’t know how to write,” said a teacher.

In fact, in some of the worksheets that were being sent back, the teachers realised that the children were asking someone in the neighbourhood to write it for them.

Some have older cousins in the locality who could be doing the assignments for them.

“We could understand it was not done by them. So, we started going to their neighbourhoods in December and teaching them in their locality after taking their parents' consent,” said Chatterjee.

For some of these children there are elder siblings at home who help them but that is not a regular affair and these pre-primary children are missing out .

The next step for these children is to go to a formal school, which is usually a government school and Calcutta Rescue has realised that for them to be in such a school they have to know and evaluate their level.