E-learning, digital classrooms and emailing the homework: new ways of teaching and learning have become the everyday reality of children attending schools all over the world during the pandemic. However to participate in such activities requires equipments: laptops, cameras, stable internet connection and skills to operate such devices, applications. The less fortunate, those who struggle to buy a laptop and smartphone for their children are falling behind. Not to mention those, who need to choose between paying their electricity and internet bills and between buying food and medicine. For children coming from less fortunate families education provides the best opportunity to get a better paying and more stable job than their parents. Digitalisation of the classrooms has been fast forwarded by the Covid crisis, but it is also widening the gap between the society.
Ilona Kigyos studies in her home In Nagykereki. Ilona has to wake up at 5.00 at a school day, and gets back home at 17.00 from the creative school she attends in a nearby town. Her laptop was not easily payed from the family budget, but her parents found her education important, so money was cut elsewhere.
Kristof is learning what kind of bones a body has in the after school support program, run by Igazgyongy foundation In Told. Home schooling for small graders would require from parents to have teaching skills, but in many low income families either those skills are missing, or the parents are having blue collar jobs that do not allow them to have home office and look after their kids.
Krisztofer Vadasz, 11 year old, 5th grader, and Levente Vadasz, 9 year old 4th grader, are learning literature at the Vadasz family's home in Komadi. They photograph their homework with their smartphone and send it in to their school.
Fanni Toth and Edit Alisa Rostas are having a math class for first graders at a temporary family home in Nyiregyhaza.
Pictures hang on the wall at the Vadasz family's home in Komadi. The kids live with their grandparents who take a lot of pride in the children's education success.
Hanna Fekete, 4th grade student, and Tunde Fekete, 1st grade student, are both having online classes in Nyarsapat. Their parents stay home separately, so they can help the children log into classes as connection is sometimes weak in the Farmlands of Hungary. The parents managed to split their time at their workplace, which doesn't allow home office, so one of them can always be with the children.
Nikolasz Norbi Pap and Csabi Harkaly are riding their bicycle between their classes. They live with their grandmother Agnes Harkaly and study from home in Farkaslyuk. Their parents have left Farkaslyuk to search for jobs in other parts of the county, and Agnes is struggling to find enough money to feed them and pay for the electric bills and for the internet costs at the same time. Only one of the kids has a smartphone so they do their homework on paper, photograph it to send it to their teachers.
Rebeka Lics, a 17 year old 11th grader, is attending a literature class while calming her baby in the farmlands of Nyarsapat.
Kira Horvath, a 7th grader, has received a laptop from the Igazgyonygy foundation to study from home in Biharkeresztes. The family can only pay for the smallest internet package so attending all the classes is sometimes a problem. When the official learning system fails they still try to figure out to hold the class via messenger.
Dominika Beri woke up at 04.00 to catch the 05.10 bus into Debrecen, so she could take her graduation Exam. Dominika is attending one of the strongest high schools of the county, which requires 3 hours of commuting daily from her remote village of Mezosas. With home schooling she can use that time to study for her graduation exam, as she is aiming to go to the Law University in Budapest. She feels, that with home schooling all that could be good in a school is taken away from them: the friendships, the prom, the graduation ceremony, all that would be the highlight of a teenagers year.