The schools and college have been shut due to the lockdown imposed to curb the coronavirus. But, now the educational institutes are planning on commencing their academic year in physical classrooms as the lockdown has been loosened.

The institutes, especially the schools, had started their academic year online to avoid any loss of education and time for the students.

Many of the management institutions like IITs, IIMs have also planned out the entire academic year online or as long as this pandemic lasts so that the students are able to continue with their degrees and programs from the comfort of their homes and without exposing themselves to the people.

Even though education is being continued online, the quality of education and assessment is highly debatable.

The education experts have expressed their concerns on the pattern of the assessments and have stated that the exams that would be conducted online might not be the best alternative to assess the knowledge imparted to the students as the long answer type questions would certainly be not asked as their evaluation will consume a lot of time, so the only options that are left with the teachers are of multiple-choice questions and the short answer type questions.

 As the lockdown is gradually being lifted, the colleges are planning to open up their campuses for the students so that they can continue with their education, but they will have to strictly maintain social distancing and follow the precautions so as to avoid the virus.

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has released their revised academic calendar wherein it states that the management institutions that function under the affiliation of AICTE shall commence from August 1, 2020.  The current students of the colleges affiliated to AICTE will be able to join back their colleges from August 16, 2020.

These classes generally start around June 30 every year, but the global pandemic made this impossible this year and thus, the commence date of the classes was postponed to July 31, 2020, in the previous academic schedule released by All India Council for Technical Education. The same academic schedule has been revised again and has been published to the students. 

Although the management students will be able to join their colleges from August 1, 2020, the classes for the students of the programs like Pharmacy, Engineering, Architecture, and other courses have been further postponed from August 16, 2020.

The classes for the existing students of the programs other than management will commence from September 15, 2020, according to the new schedule released by All India Council for Technical Education.

The academic session and the teaching process for the newly admitted students, including lateral entry to the second-year courses are planned to commence from September 15, 2020.

According to the latest academic schedule shared by All India Council for Technical Education, the classes for the courses apart from PGCM and PGDM shall commence from August 15, 2020.

According to the latest guidelines shared by the All India Council for Technical Education, it has directed the colleges to complete their first round of counselling along and also to get started with their admission process latest by August 30, 2020.

However, the last date up until which the students can be admitted into the institutes is September 15, 2020. As per the latest guidelines for the academic year, the admissions for the open and distance learning shall commence from August 16, 2020. 

When the previous version of the academic calendar was released by the All India Council for Technical Education, it had asked the colleges to enrol the students, but on a provisional basis, just in case the result for the undergraduate programs is not released due to the lockdown imposed by the government across the nation. In such cases, the students were required to show their completion certificates latest by December 31, 2020.

In this year, earlier, the All India Council for Technical Education has sent out a notice to all the institutions affiliated to All India Council for Technical Education to neither hike the fee for the academic year 2020-21 nor to force the students to pay the fees until the lockdown has been removed and the situation has been normalized.

The notice was further iterated to include that the salaries must be paid to the teaches without a doubt. As it was obvious that the people were losing jobs and the financial stress was being increased, this was an important step to avoid the stress and the financial constraint that the families would have to face in this pandemic.

It was directed so that the families of the staff members of the colleges do not starve themselves in these critical times. 

But as the colleges are about to get started, another thing that is of utmost concern is maintaining social distance with lakhs of students that are present on the campus. The institutes have come up with the idea of smaller classroom sizes, but that will surely increase the work time for the teachers.

The thermal checkups at the entry points are important, and also the use of sanitizers need to be emphasized. The common facilities like the hostels, canteens, etc. will require extra sanitation and precautions to ensure the students’ safety.

Although the online classes will continue for the students that are not able to make it to the college campus, the student-teacher ratio is, however of major concern while keeping the members safe from coronavirus.

The worst part is that not all the colleges have the infrastructure and the staff members that would be required to support the decreased class sizes and a greater number of working hours for the students.

The institutes are coming up with new ways to keep the education a continued process so that the students do not risk their future and are able to achieve the necessary knowledge and experience. 

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