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As education systems around the world grapple with COVID-related school closures and resulting learning and enrollment losses, imp to remember the veritable lifelong damage inflicted on children in war-zones.
This very good article 'A two-year break' (The Economist; Mar 20, 2021) summarizes (no) schooling situation in #IOK in the past two years. Borrowed content for this thread;
In Indian occupied Kashmir schools remained closed for two years until schools started opening slowly in March 2021. First closure happened after August 5th 2019 when Indian government revoked the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir under Art 370.
Schools & universities were sealed, Internet severed, which meant no homeschooling either. Then covid-19 struck and schools shut again. While the rest of India continued more or less, schooling in Kashmir suffered as even where Internet service existed, it was the very slow 2G.
Some schools delivered schoolwork on flash drives, but that was far from meaningful continuity. Some outcomes of long closures; A national survey released by the government in January 2021, assessed the quality of learning in public schools of Kashmir the lowest in the country.
Enrollment dropped by 175,000 pupils as compared to 19,000 in 2018 (pre-closure). Psychological damage assessed by a small survey of locals in Srinagar in 2020 shows that 62% children experience anxiety about their circumstances and 72% don’t see a purpose in life.
Private schools suffered too. 1/5 of the valley’s 13,500 schools are private, and some 30 have already gone out of business, with more to follow. One school-owner says revenue dropped by 88% in 2020.
As for higher ed, an estimated 2,000 Kashmiris travel abroad to study every year. In 2020 this figure fell to zero. Hundreds of Kashmiris planning to study medicine in Bangladesh have had to give up, because their rules don't allow deferment, no exceptions.
