So..whats your point here? How does this relate to the current situation ? Elaborate will you?
It is heartening that this forum can have good conversation, without dragging unwanted (eg Political) issues.
First I am not an educator like you and lacks any training in that aspect, and first give the credit to you and all our teachers in Sri Lanka who took to online education , without any kind of training in to that, according to my thinking. Distance education was used in Sri Lanka for teaching English for a long time there was a very popular one using both Tv and Radio and also using print media.
We had very good educational print media such as Nuwana, (70s) . They were all alternate education methods and online is the latest and most powerful tool at the hand of a teacher.
Distance education is as old as myself ! not a new thing as Radio was/ is used even in developed world (even now) due to limitations such as access to school.
Online education was used for education at least in early 2000 for University Education. I know that in UK in 2004 their No 2 rated degree (world no 29) was offered entirely online at that time, and the point is online is the way forward, though it is not perfect in this imperfect world.
Points are here
1. We had a very successful distance education From SLBC till it was scrapped. If not, we could have swathed to this with the use of internet as supplementary.
So it can be used again , with online or hybrid. With correct resources allocation and expertise being added by MOE.
2.There were countries in the developed world (I do not know still there is ) who used Radio to educate remote areas. In radio there is no tailor made lessons as it is for masses at large.
3. Inequality, in access cannot be a reason to scrap online education , as in any other reason
4. Using online education is not the same as face to face in person education. So the differences needs to be identified and adopt it accordingly.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcmSTD9Kv88
There are lot of international experiences and we can learn from them. Eg MOOC(Mass Open Online Courses)
5. Please do not condemn this media as there is lot of potential in online education in third world countries where access to education is already having lot of disparities .This is a medium that can eliminate such disparity , too.