Education sector incurred maximum loss due to COVID-19, need to reduce learning gap

New Delhi: Noting that the education sector has incurred maximum losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday stressed upon newer approaches for teaching to reduce the learning gap.

"The education sector has incurred maximum loss due to the pandemic. Reducing the learning gap is a very difficult mission to undertake, but an important one," Sisodia said after laying the foundation stone for a new placement centre, open theatre and auditorium at the GGSIP University here.

There is a need to come together and take the responsibility of adopting newer and better approaches to teaching and learning in order to reduce this learning gap, he added.

"COVID-19 has widened the learning gap in students, and to reduce this learning gap, we have to urgently adopt novel approaches in our teaching and learning. We have to decide whether we should continue to teach our children using archaic and traditional approaches or really teach them how to learn," the deputy chief minister said.

Reiterating the need to adopt diverse approaches to learning during Covid, Sisodia said two methods of teaching are adopted in the field of higher education all over the world – one involves teaching content from four-five books, and the other is to teach children to read by taking samples from some part of the content in books.

"While the first method of teaching is adopted in most of the universities in our country, the second method is mostly adopted in developed countries. COVID-19 has challenged us to adopt the second method of teaching and teach students how to learn," he said.

Sisodia, who is also Delhi's education minister, stated that it is time for us to decide the kind of approaches we should adopt in our online or semi-online modules.

"It will be incredibly unfair to students if we insist on teaching them in traditional ways. We need to adopt a massive change in our teaching methods so that we can do justice to our present and future generation of children.

"I appeal to the teachers to adopt new and innovative methods of teaching and share them with other colleagues so that we can collectively reduce the learning gap," he said.