Kushika Srivastava, 36, is worried that her daughter Sharanya, 6, might refuse to sit for exams scheduled later this month. The resident of Wellington, a town in the Nilgiris, says that Sharanya has attended a big chunk of her formative schooling years online. She struggles to write with a pencil, and at the pace that teachers expect her to. “Initially, she was excited to go to formal school for the very first time, but she complains and is struggling to cope.” Since lower and upper KG classes were more focused on activities and verbal lessons, she’s finding it hard to accept written work. “In Class I, which she joined directly when she returned to offline school, her subjects are no longer limited to English, Hindi and Math. She also has Environmental Studies (EVS) and Computers. She says her fingers hurt and refuses to get out of bed and hopes she can go back to virtual class,” shares Srivastava.  The mother has little choice but to improve Kushika’s timing, making her write for 20 minutes straight while setting a timer. It’s all to prep her for the upcoming exams. In LKG and UKG, all she did was tick multiple choice question answers on a Google form. The half yearly exams, held late last year, were a mix of online (MCQ) and offline exams where question papers were sent in advance to the parents, and since children were writing them from the comfort of their home, there was no time limit. This will be the first test without her mother’s presence. “Children [of Class I] have no idea what exams are. If she leaves questions unanswered, I’m not sure what we can do.”

Srivastava says the trouble doesn’t end once she’s off to school. When she returns, the last thing she wants to do is write some more and complete her homework.