Promotion to Class 1 worries parents of LKG kids

Kurnool: With schools all set to reopen on Monday, parents of LKG and UKG children are under stress unsure of whether to send their wards to school or continue them in the same section. This is even as school managements are insisting on promotion to higher classes.  

Kids, who joined LKG, when corona first broke out, are now being asked to join the first standard instead of UKG. Ditto is the case with UKG kids, who have been promoted to class 2. Parents are in a dilemma as they are worried about their children’s cognitive abilities of things, numbers, and places. There are around 80,000 students from the district in pre-primary classes.

Gladys Parimala, a special education teacher for the differently-abled, says children, below the age of seven years, need to be introduced to the environment, places, things, number system, and interpersonal relations in schools in a gradual manner. The kids' ability to adapt to learning systems is distinctly different from one another. In the absence of a firm foundation, promoting them to higher grades can be stressful to pre-primary and primary students, she said.

Another parent said she was surprised to see her kid's name enrolled in Class 2 straight from UKG in a private school here.

Kurnool district education officer Shantiram said “since we do not have a detention system, all students are promoted to higher classes. But how to prepare the students for higher learning is a policy decision. We do not have any guidelines from the school education commissioner”, he said.

He suggested that students could be given crash or bridge courses as a means to prepare them for higher learning.

Naga Rathnamma, a mother of two school-going children, expressed her concerns on the learning abilities of children. She narrated how her son was in LKG and able to identify letters in the chart when the pandemic struck. “But as we could not focus on children due to Covid deaths in the family, my son was unable to identify letters and numbers. I want him in LKG again,” she said.

There are 3000 government schools and 1,000 private schools in the district, said DEO Shantaram. ``We are all geared up to run classes from August 16. We have asked all teachers to submit vaccination certificates before reporting for duty. Mandal education officers have been directed to ensure that all teachers are vaccinated", he said.

Rangappa, a parent, said that pre-primary and primary kids are not able to retain or remember what they hear in online classes. It is also affecting one’s grasping powers, he said.