Home e-learning is a difficult dream

Government has said it has no money for printing home e-learning materials that were developed by the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC). The NCDC too has revealed that people who developed the e-learning content have not been paid and urged them to be patient until money is made available.
Another programme to procure radios and TVs for e-learning at home has stalled due to similar reasons. The Ministry of Education needs about Shs100b for the project. Now the development and printing of content has faced similar constraints. 
But while all this yearning for funds for e-learning is going on, government is gradually reopening the country from total lockdown imposed in March to near-normal. Schools and other education institutions have been cleared to reopen for candidate classes or final year students albeit with Standard Operating Procedures (SPOs) in place.
Schools are reopening this month for candidates and this appears to be paving way for full opening of other classes. Once this happens, learning will be done at school. So why waste billions of shillings on home e-learning when schools are nearing full opening?
Besides, online or home e-learning may not be practical with science subjects like physics, chemistry, biology and others. How does one conduct practical lessons in chemistry or physics using e-learning at home? 
The NCDC boss, Grace Baguma, has asked parents to help children with the e-learning. However, as we all know, many parents are hardly at home as they are usually away for work and return late. They will have little or no time to guide or get involved in their children’s learning process. 
Many parents did not study up to the classes which their children are in now. So they can’t guide the children because they can’t understand the content. 
The big challenge in this home e-learning programme is the false assumption that a home can be converted into a school and the parents will automatically become the teachers. It’s not practical. At school, there are teachers for different subjects, with each guiding students or pupils in the subjects where they are professionally competent. 
At home, the parents, usually only father and mother, are the only teachers and are expected to guide their children in all subjects. It is not possible for parents to guide children in e-learning in all the subjects. 
Therefore, it is far-fetched to contemplate that by developing and printing e-learning content, children will study from home and acquire sufficient knowledge. Government should prepare to reopen schools and deal with the pandemic, rather than spending billions of shillings on unpractical dreams of learning from home.