Kolkata, Jan 22 (PTI) With a significant number of students under mental stress as educational institutions are closed for almost two years now due to the pandemic, the West Bengal school education department Saturday announced the holding of a webinar to deliberate on it and provide mentoring by experts in clinical psychology, officials said.

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The webinar titled 'The Mind of Students During COVID Time' would have a session for class 11 students and another for their guardians and school teachers, the department said in a notification.

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The January 23 webinar will touch upon teaching, learning-related topics, issues pertaining to mental happiness of students and their social activities among others and will be streamed live on Facebook and Youtube.

The module and contents are being selected by a committee of experts, it said.

"We are aware that the long closure of school campuses during the pandemic has caused serious stress on students. The state government tried to explore alternative means like online classes and classes through TV network and through broadcasting. But the lack of the ambience of a physical classroom, alienation from the school campus, not meeting class mates and peers for months and lack of adaptability to digital way of learning is impacting the young minds to a great extent," he said.

If the problem is not addressed it may cause long term adverse impact on young minds and the webinar is aimed at addressing this issue, the official said.

To a question whether webinars could reach out to a vast majority of students, he said in the present situation there is no option though many of them are not comfortable with the virtual media.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)