Education in India—During COVID-19 Challenges Faced and Solutions for a Post-Pandemic Era

Mankind has faced pandemic situations and the misery that it had bought along. Determination, knowledge and the guidance of leaders helped humans fight, survive and emerged more resilient. This paper tries to summarizes the experiences in India during the Coronavirus pandemic with specific reference to education sector. The impact of coronavirus pandemic on education has been a cause of concern since the lockdown first began. Further, this paper highlights how schools quickly jumped into action and continued their classes online so that the students' year is not wasted. Even if it required teachers to learn new technology overnight. As the paper progresses it emphasises – how educators were trying to figure out the new normal of education, evolving all stakeholders – students, teachers and parents. Adaption of a system to ensure seamless delivery of classes, revamped curriculum to suit the online format, relaxations on assessments and evaluations for students. The paper also brings out the difficulties faced due to Low internet penetration and unsupportive home environment. Further, highlighting the stress of faculty, parents and students due to uncertainty they faced. The Authors have tried to bring into context precautions necessary to prevent the potential spread of COVID-19 in school settings without stigmatising students and staff who may have been exposed to the virus, while minimising disruption and protecting students and staff from discrimination. Further, the authors have brought out the problems that may be faced while reopening schools and also tried to give solutions to the above problems especially laying emphasis on students and staff being updated regarding basic information about (COVID-19). The authors having experience in teaching & counselling go a step ahead by laying down principles of Safe School Operations after the end of the pandemic with emphasis to development of school emergency and contingency plans. The paper also emphasises on Information Sharing specially in coordinating & following guidelines for staff, caregivers and students. The paper concludes with the author suggesting upgrading of school policies, viz. developing flexible attendance and sick leave policies that encourage students and staff to stay home when sick, Identify critical job functions and positions, and planning for alternative coverage by cross-training staff. Further, it suggests adaption of reviewed accelerated education strategies by engaging with communities. © 2023 DMICS.

Evolution of the internet gender gaps in Spain and effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is a widely accepted belief in new technologies that the digital divide in using a service will disappear as the service reaches an advanced level of maturity. The work presented here shows that this idea is debatable. Data from Spain, a country where daily internet users are 75.9 percent of the population, prove that the gender gap still exists. The paper explores if this gap can be entirely explained by the socioeconomic differences between men and women. We build a micro panel model and incorporate a set of socioeconomic variables (age, education, income, employment status, digital skills, and resident population) that allow us to isolate the effects of gender on the decision to become a daily Internet user. The results conclude that the Internet gap is a phenomenon with a specific gender component. Other things being equal a woman negatively affects the probability of using the Internet. Applying a similar model to 15 Internet services, we obtain that gender is always significant to explain the likelihood of being a user of each service. However, in some services (7 out of 15), the effect is favorable to women, and for other services (8), the gender effect favors men. The work concludes by analyzing the impact of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the use of Internet services, paying particular attention to its possible implications for the gender gap.

Internet penetration and airline pricing: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impacts of increasing Internet penetration on airfares and price dispersion in the Chinese airline market. It is found that an increase in Internet penetration is associated with higher average airfares and lower price dispersion between the major Chinese carriers. It appears that the increase in Internet penetration seems to have strengthened the major airlines’ ability to maintain price stability, which is an indication of the existence mutual forbearance among the major carriers confirmed in other studies. Higher prices and lower price dispersion are mostly to occur in the most heavily markets. This research also finds that if carriers possess similar degree of market power, the price dispersion between the airline pair is smaller. The findings can generate important policy insights, and inform anti-trust policies in the post-Covid period, when more consumers use Internet for search and inquiries, and when big data and artificial intelligence technologies mature.