Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): Speech impaired children have been the worst sufferers in the lockdown, as far as imparting education through online classes goes.

Most of such children belong to poor families who can neither afford a television set nor a mobile phone for online classes.

One such speech impaired child is Raja, a student of class 4. He would go to school 16 months ago, but he remains in his house these days.

His parents cannot afford an android phone. The relatives of Raja have appealed to the government to provide him an android phone.

Raja’s school is located Andhkukh bypass. Many students study in the school with him, but the administration has allowed only the students of class 11 and class 12 to go to school.

The students from nursery to class 8 are getting education through online classes.

A teacher of the school Leela Tiwari says that there are 13 speech impaired children in the class. But she has failed to teach anyone of them in the past 16 months, as they cannot afford an android mobile phone.

Block education officer NK Bokade, says that there are 68 schools and organisations where 5,500 speech impaired students get education.

He further says illiteracy rate among these children has been 45%, but, because of the corona-induced closure of school, it is bound to go up.

Such children are not able to connect themselves with the online education, he says, adding that the rate of illiteracy rate may go up to 70%.

(With input from Shiv Choubey)