All this rhetoric about the Punjab Government pushing back on schools to not charge for online classes seems to allude the following:

1. There was a huge opportunity to revamp & scale our education delivery process with technology. With this, even the remotest locations could have been provided with the best of teachers and training.
   
   The govt’s uncharacteristic regulation on curbing schools to charge would just lead to schools pulling back their investment plans.
2. I believe that a not-insignificant number of parents who are insisting against fees to schools are seemingly OK with their kids being at home on phones or TV sets but not learning new skills. Precious time (months!) are being lost in a child’s education.
   
   The online classes could have helped them not lose those days, especially in subjects like Science and Maths (to which I am close to, and I know it is difficult to catch up if you miss those classes)

Since COVID-19 caught us off-guard and proved that our preparedness was nowhere close to what should have been there, one of the easier problems to solve was to let the educational institutes make use of Technology to ensure the children don’t lag behind in education, and now we are blowing this one too!