India’s learning poverty has shot up’: World Bank’s Global Director for Education

• Vaid's ICS, Lucknow
• 14, Apr 2022

World Bank’s Global Director for Education was recently in India to discuss concerns over learning losses for children due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key Facts:

1. India needs to do a lot to bridge the learning losses due to the impact of the pandemic.
2. Globally, Each country is living in a learning crisis even before the pandemic.
3. Now, Due to Covid impact, children are out of school for 2 years , and it has a dramatic effect on their learning and their well-being.
4. The World Bank is supporting $2.1 billion to the country.

The impact of COVID-19 on education in India? WB

1. We see the impacts of the pandemic in all countries, but definitely much more in countries in which the closures have been the longest such as in South Asia and Latin America.
2. According to World bank learning poverty calculation, It was found that if before the pandemic, about 53% of children were not able to read a simple text by the age of 10, which is already a crisis, unfortunately, with the pandemic, this has shot up to 70%.
3. In India, learning poverty has shot up from 54% to 70%.

How can schools work to bridge learning gaps?

1. The first action is to open schools. Most countries by now have opened schools but still, there are those that have only opened partially. However, that schools are open doesn’t mean automatically kids are coming back.
2. We need to reach every child to ensure that all of them re-enrol. We need very aggressive enrollment campaigns to ensure that they bring kids back to school.
3. The second key action is to assess learning to know where kids are today.
4. Third, we need to prioritise teaching the fundamentals.

Many countries have very rich and dense curricula with many subjects, but we need to make sure that at least in the beginning, children are focusing on the fundamentals.

5. Fourth, we need to increase catch-up learning which will require very effective instructional time. [To achieve this] teachers will require a lot of support. And finally, we really need to work on emotional support for both children and teachers.
6. Surveys have shown that many students have been forced to withdraw from private schools and enrol in government schools with a decline in household incomes.

FACTS FOR PRELIMS

SEEMA DARSHAN PROJECT

Union Home and Cooperative Minister Amit Shah has inaugurated ‘Seema Darshan Project’ at Nadabet located on the Indo-Pak border in Banaskantha District of Gujarat.

•  This multipurpose tourism project was completed under the direct guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• ‘Seema darshan Project’ was initiated with the aim to provide an opportunity to the people so that they can visualize the life and work of the BSF personnel on our border.
• BSF is constantly protecting our borders in very adverse weather conditions.
• Under the ‘Seema Darshan Project’, all kinds of tourist facilities and other special attractions have been developed at a cost of 1 crore 25 lakhs.

AXIOM MISSION 1

A SpaceX capsule carrying three paying customers and a former NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station, finishing the first leg of this first-of-its-kind mission that will last about 10 days.

About:

The Ax-1 mission, which was organized by Houston company Axiom Space, is flying on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour.

Axiom Mission 1 (or Ax-1) is a private crew mission to the International Space Station (ISS), operated by Axiom Space out of Axiom Space’s Mission Control Center (or MCC-A) in Houston, TX. The flight launched on 8 April 2022, from Kennedy Space Center.

Axiom Space was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the world’s first commercial space station.