Low income, high fee: Why fewer children may join private schools in 2021

More than 80% of parents with children studying in government schools reported that education was "not delivered" during the lockdown

Fourteen-year-old Alisha Saini loves to study. "I understand everything I am taught in school and what I don't, didi next-door helps me understand," she said. But she couldn't access online classes, between March 24 and August 2020, when the government senior secondary school in Dorasar, in northern Rajasthan was shut, like all other schools in the country, because of the COVID-19-induced lockdown. (The Rajasthan lockdown began on Sunday, March 22.)

Teachers would WhatsApp lesson links to students, but few students could access those, and few of those who could access understood what was being taught, survey data, students and teachers told