Remedial Education as a Remedy
In February 2022 I decided to help a struggling RTE student catch up with her class. Kavya would soon be in 2nd grade. She had been in a Marathi medium school in the kindergarten and then got admission through RTE in a well-known English medium school in the first grade. Then she became a victim of the pandemic like so many other children, as schools shut down. She started online in her new school, and her struggles were compounded. Her English Medium school teachers had done a wonderful job of teaching her English basic pronunciations. While she could read most three- and four-letter words, she did not understand most of the words she was reading. There were other gaps as well. At the end of the 1st grade she went for remedial classes in school. However, she was paying a heavy price for the pandemic and her pickup was slow. Very slow. I thought about asking her teachers to keep her back in the first grade. Unfortunately, I found out that the RTE system, does not let the school