Quelling Covid’s impact on education

Sutil, who lives in a remote village in West Kalimantan, Indonesia (the world’s fourth most populous country), has found educating his child during Covid-19 to be a monumental challenge.

As a farmer with a lack of electricity and no access to the internet or television, Sutil has found it difficult to help his child with his lessons. Once a week, teachers come to the children’s homes so they can help the children with their learning, however, in many cases, they have difficulties finding the children because they are out with their parents in the rice fields.

Rosa is a teacher in Bekasi, Indonesia. Her daughter attends a private school and is accessing online learning several hours a day. But she finds that juggling her job with family responsibilities, and the poor internet connectivity make teaching and learning so much harder during Covid-19.

These challenging experiences are happening in countries across the world. Some of the most privileged students and teachers have been able to cope with the changes after schools closed, but not the majority.

2020 marks a dramatically different childhood experience that these young people will remember for the rest of their lives, and a different teaching experience where teachers have had to rapidly adapt, be creative, and shift roles.

This different education service, over many months, has the potential of having a huge negative impact on students’ skills and economic prospects for the rest of their lives.

Covid-19 is wreaking havoc on the lives of young children, students, and youth. The disruption of societies and economies caused by the pandemic is aggravating the pre-existing global education crisis and is impacting education in unprecedented ways.

LEARNING CRISIS

Even before Covid-19 hit, the world was experiencing a learning crisis: 258 million children of primary- and secondary-school age were out of school, and the learning poverty rate (LPR) in low- and middle-income countries was 53% – meaning that over half of all 10-year-old children could not read and understand a simple text. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the figure was closer to 90%.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the learning crisis, and the impact on the human capital of this generation of learners is likely to be long-lasting.

At the peak of school closures in April 2020, 94% of students – or 1.6 billion children – were out of school worldwide, and, still, around 700 million students today are studying from home, in a context of huge uncertainty and with families and schools having to navigate across options of hybrid and remote learning, or no schooling at all.

In the vast majority of countries, there is no end in sight to this uncertainty. Early evidence from several high-income countries has already revealed learning losses and increases in inequality.

Young children are particularly at risk since the pandemic is exacerbating existing disparities in nutrition, health, and stimulation, and services to support these children are too often overlooked in the pandemic response. Most early childhood education institutions are closed.

And the unique nature of the pandemic places parents as first-line responders for children’s survival, care, and learning. This places a burden on all families, and especially the most vulnerable.

Adding to this global shock to education systems is the negative impact of the unprecedented global economic contraction on family incomes, which increase the risk of school dropouts, and also results in the contraction of government budgets and strains on public education spending. The extended school closures, together with this economic downturn, is a twin unprecedented shock to education.

Due to learning losses and increases in dropout rates, this generation of students stand to lose an estimated US$10 trillion in earnings, or almost 10% of global GDP, and countries will be driven even further off-track to achieving their LPGs – potentially increasing learning poverty levels to 63%.

SEVERE TERTIARY LOSSES

At its peak, 220 million tertiary education students were impacted by closures of campuses globally.

The tertiary education system is critical for countries’ growth. It is too soon to know the full impact on the declines and decreases in enrollment rates due to the pandemic, but severe losses of current and potential future students are expected.

Unprecedented disruption was also reported for technical and vocational education and training (TVET). According to a survey by the World Bank, International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Unesco, 90% of respondents reported a complete closure of TVET centres in their countries as the continuity of practical skills training as well as assessment and certification of practical skills has been hit particularly hard due to the social distancing measures.

As a result, this generation of students, and especially the more disadvantaged, may never achieve their full education and earnings potential. This is not acceptable, and urgent and effective action is required to address these differential learning losses, which is critical to moving forward so that these gaps don’t widen.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options for countries to choose from to cope with the pandemic shocks, to recover, and to lay the foundations to build back better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

An urgent priority is to return to learning.

Learning losses are mounting, and it is critical that children and youth re-engage with the learning process, either with effective remote learning, hybrid options, or returning to safe schemes of presential education. Many countries are already managing flexible schemes in which schools open partially or close according to the sanitary conditions. It is a complex balance of managing health risks with the huge learning losses, particularly among the poor.

The critical policy challenge is to make sure that this window of opportunity is not lost, and countries use this momentous crisis as the opportunity to start seeing a turning point in addressing the learning crisis.

While there is no single path toward the future of learning – countries can draw lessons from the pandemic and chart their own path with visionary and bold action to implement targeted investments and reforms starting today. – World Bank

Blokkie 1:

Lessons of the pandemic

· The digital divide must be closed,

· We need to invest aggressively in teachers’ professional development and use technology to enhance their work,

· Parents play a critical role in their children’s education, and need to be supported in that role, and

· Resilient systems require better education conditions at home, devices, connectivity, and books.

Blokkie 2

10 actions to recover, accelerate learning

1. Assessing learning loss and monitor progress, when children return to school and during remote instruction;

2. Providing remedial education and socio-emotional support to help students catch-up and ensure school retention;

3. Restructuring the academic calendar, to adjust for lost school days due to the pandemic;

4. Adapting the curriculum, to prioritise foundational learning (including social-emotional learning) accounting for the lost time;

5. Preparing and supporting teachers, to manage burnout, improve digital skills, identify those students needing support and adjust instruction to meet them where they are at;

6. Preparing and supporting school management, to develop and implement plans that ensure health and safety conditions for children’s return to schools and learning continuity;

7. Communicating with stakeholders, to build ownership and support from parents/ caregivers, teachers, school staff and the broader community for school reopening plans;

8. Encouraging re-enrolment, with special emphasis on at-risk of dropout populations;

9. Minimising disease transmission in schools, supporting campaigns for vaccination rollout and following epidemiological guidelines for sanitation and hygiene to prevent outbreaks, activation of remote instruction; and

10.Supporting learning at home, by distributing books, digital devices where possible and resource packs for remote learning to children and parents.