The devastating Covid-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on almost all the sectors. The Education sector bore the brunt of the fury throughout the world and Tamil Nadu could be no exception. The pandemic induced hiatus took a toll on the students’ learning loss due to closure of schools for more than one-and-a-half years. On the other side, the digital divide was exacerbated by disparities in access to the internet and helped the students very little in making good the loss. Finding that the learning loss is a cause of concern and will have serious repercussions in the learning ability of the students in future, especially among government school students and those in rural areas, the Tamil Nadu government accorded immediate priority to address the learning losses and unveiled “Illam Thedi Kalvi” – a first of its kind scheme in the country to take Education at the doorsteps of the students outside school hours. Launching the unique and progressive scheme in Villupuram District on October 27, Chief Minister M.K Stalin said “the DMK government is committed to promote education at all levels, right from School to University, for all sections of the society.” The scheme has been designed to bridge the learning gap caused by the deadly Covid-19 pandemic and take primary education to the next stage, he said. The scheme would be implemented to rectify the learning losses of government school students from classes 1 to 8. The post-school special classes would be conducted at places close to the children, he said adding the scheme was also envisaged to prevent the children from dropping out and bring back those who had dropped out to schools during the pandemic. The scheme would be rolled out in 12 districts as a pilot project and based on the inputs, would be extended to other districts from November 15 in a phased manner, the Chief Minister said. The home-based education program is an initiative of the School Education Department. It has already launched the process to recruit volunteers and organize state level training programmes. The School Management Committees (SMCs) would Our Bureau ‘Illam Thedi Kalvi’ THE RISING SUN Tn takes Education to children’s Doorsteps be fully involved in selecting the volunteers and priority would be given to women, officials said. The volunteers, mostly from the local areas, would be selected through a well laid out criteria...