The Netaji Government Sponsored Free Primary School (GSFP) at Subhas Pally in Siliguri has arguably become the first government school in the Siliguri sub-division to start online classes amid the lockdown.

At a time when school education has come to a halt and private schools have resorted to online classes, government schools had been lagging behind.

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As most guardians and students are not well-versed about the usage of technological gadgets, the school called the guardians to guide them on installing the applications and software in mobile phones so that they could help their children in their online sessions.

Trinamul Congress leader and the teacher-in-charge of the school, Ranjan Shil Sharma, said, “Schools have remained shut for the past two months, so education has come to a halt. We never know when the schools will reopen. Other schools have already started online classes. The higher income group of society can afford private schools and are thus availing of online class facilities, but the backward section suffers. As such, a resentment also arises in the latter’s mind. Hence, we decided to go for online classes for our school too.”

“We have 578 pupils in our school. We are now holding live classes where students and teachers can interact with each other using Google Meet. The guardians, however, lack the necessary technological knowledge so we have been calling them to provide training on a 10- guardians-per-day basis. We had been imparting such training for the past four days and today was the last day. Some 75 percent of the guardians attended the training. We have already started with our online classes, which has been successful for the past two days,” he added.

According to teachers of the school, students have been enthusiastic about the classes and specific WhatsApp groups have also been formed for written assignments and homework.

The school authorities have also made it a point to observe social distancing norms and take necessary precautions concerning sanitisation of the guardians during their training sessions, it is learnt.