The Navi Mumbai Corporation is reaching out to students, forced out of classrooms by the Covid 19 pandemic, with free online counselling.

To give its giant effort wings, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has roped in a large pool of psychologists to counsel its 40,000-plus students studying in corporation schools. The aim of this outreach is to assess the impact of online schooling on them.

The move assumes significance given the fact that it aims to evaluate the psychological health of students, who have not been able to physically attend classes since the Coronavirus infection spread in the country from last year.

NMMC has drawn a plan to implement this objective and under it the psychologists will evaluate the students’ mental health and also counsel those who need such support. The evaluation will take place at regular intervals through online sessions.

In an article in the Indian Express, the NMMC Commissioner, Abhijit Bangar said: “It has been over a year that the students are attending online classes. They have been completely cut off from conventional school life. Learning in a classroom atmosphere is a very important social activity for students and through that only, their psychological development happens, which has totally ceased since last year.” He added that the whole exercise has been planned to evaluate the mental health of all students.

Sharing details, Bangar said: ““We are in discussion with psychiatrists, and are planning to develop a few sessions like group discussion, interactive sessions and group activities for the students. Through these activities, the professionals will understand the students’ state of mind, and those who need help, would be given so.”

Last week, NMMC also decided to ensure that there is no break in the online education of students to extend financial assistance to students of corporation-run schools to help them purchase mobile internet connection.

In the initial phase the Corporation will deposit Rs 1,000 in the bank accounts of the students to enable them to buy six months of internet packages. This has been decided considering the financial restraints of their parents.

With the lockdown in practice since last one year, schools run by the municipal corporation have remained closed with the classes being conducted online. Since most of the NMMC run schools have students from lower-middle class families, many children may have the money to buy internet packages.

It was also found that as many parents did not have a computer, the students used the smart phones but due to lack of resources to buy the mobile internet package, several children were not able to attend the classes. This adversely affected their education.

The start of the new academic year coupled with the fact that the pandemic continued to keep the schools closed, it is vital that children have access to the internet in order to attend classes.

Briefing the media on this Bangar said: “We all know that the third wave is expected in August or September and schools won’t be opening anytime in the near future. So, we are preparing a plan wherein online education will be smooth, and we are encouraging it. But, it has been observed that while imparting online education, parents and studentsare facing several issues and one of them is internet recharge on their phones. We are coming up with many initiatives to enable online schooling and, to begin with, we have decided to solve this basic issue of internet data plan.”

While working out the modalities of the transfer of the money, Bangar said the corporation is also trying to solve the issue of those 1,600 students who do not have smartphones.

“Providing internet packs is only one of the initiatives. It is not an ultimate solution, but it will enable the corporation to engage all students. We are also in the process of adopting several other practices to start enhancing the online education system. We will introduce them soon,” Bangar told IE.