Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on Educational Sector in India – 3-D view Analysis for futuristic enhancements

Abstract

Background:The covid-19 outbreak adversely impacted the educational sector in India. Consequently, online education foisted in almost all the educational institutions in India, from primary to higher educational levels. Sudden shifts from traditional education to online education have impacted all three dimensions of the educational ecosystem, namely: the students & parents, the teachers, and the educational institutions.Many authors researched the difficulties of students, teachers, or institutions or concentrated on specific regions or a particular level of education in their research work. This research work has considered responses from the school level to higher education level from different institutes (public and private), considering the entire educational ecosystem (students, teachers, and institutions) across India, which distinguishes its contributions from others.

Objectives: This paper put forward the positive and negative impacts of the pandemic on the educational ecosystem and their effect in the post-pandemic. So that new strategies can be designed to prevent the issues in the future to continue online education.

Methods:Formal structured interview was conducted among teachers, students/parents, and administrative staff of Government and private educational institutions across India. Around 60 responses from each category were collected, analysed, and summarized.

Results:It is identified that the unprivileged (belonging to below the poverty line & from families in which parents lost their job due to the pandemic) students could not attend the classes and could not pay the fee in time. Low-budget Educational institutions are affected a lot. Further findings have been elaborated in the Result & Discussion session.

Conclusions: The study's findings might be helpful to the institutions, employers, and regulatory authorities of all educational institutions planning to implement online education as a regular activity in the future. The insights driven by the findings can make them revisit their existing policies and redesign the new strategies to succeed in online education in the future.Researchers could extend their research on finding the view of students in adopting online education considering various metric. The recommendations for practitioners would bring equal opportunity to all the students from various financial and societal backgrounds and improve overall student learning in India.Further research will understand the outcome of online education in various sectors, the consequences of online teaching-learning, and its impact.