COVID-19: Education Crisis Must Not Be Overlooked Amid Health Crisis

Special spittoons and public messages like “not to spit inside public buildings or outdoor spaces” were never a part of a normal social life of an American until the War on Tuberculosis impacted the community at the end of 19th century.

Crisis always stimuli actions and responses; it alters society — more often than not for its own good — by exhorting better habits and practices. Also, the impact of diseases always extends beyond the moment in which they occur.

Many infrastructural developments and healthy behaviours we are seeing today are the results of past campaigns and restrictions imposed in response to devastating outbreaks.

Due to COVID – 19 emergencies, a large number of children in many countries have been affected by school closures, with the number growing by the day. So calling this pandemic humanity’s biggest health crisis alone is not sufficient.

Besides the health crisis, it is rapidly becoming an economic crisis and its aftermath can make it an educational crisis too.

According to UNESCO, these nationwide closures are impacting over 91% of the world’s student population.

This disruption in education by school closure even if it is temporary will cause high social and economic costs to the countries especially those already having high percentage of vulnerable population.

Today the world is having more than 70 million vulnerable people, which includes internally displaced, refugees and migrants.

As per many pieces of research, including a report of UN-Habitat 2016, growing urbanization, which encompasses 55% of world’s population, has not provided ideal condition for overcoming poverty which restricts poor to exercise their rights including educational one.

Though the most extreme educational deprivation was observed in African and Asian slums, social deprivation was also reported among urban poor’s living in highly developed countries such as Boston (USA) and Birmingham (UK). Researches have illustrated that the poor heterogeneous conditions of urban poor restrict them to reach a satisfactory level of well-being.

In countries where educational policies were introduced to improve school progression and reduce the number of dropouts, where lack of parents will in addition to poverty and accessibility plays a major role in dropping out of school.

Worryingly, even at places where education is a fundamental right, the social outreach programs are still to revolutionize the primary education.

What should we be worried the most about in the current COVID-19 crisis that might have an immediate impact on children?

The answer is a long period of disengagement from school — especially for children living in shelters, camps or who are internally displaced, school closures will be most upsetting as they are already at a disadvantage.

One needs to remember that a long period of disengagement from school could result in a further increase and exaggerating the problem of further dropout and learning losses.

It can be expected that some children will never return to the classroom after schools reopened. Others can have fallen far behind in learning.

The circumstances brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic can potentially birth a gigantic educational crisis without a parallel in history. So, planning for recovery efforts based on the learning’s of the impact of previous health emergencies on education, like the recent Ebola outbreak, can prove to be helpful.

Suggestions For Recovery Efforts:

Many countries had already moved to online learning platforms for conducting classes, but the transition to this platform won’t be easy for countries already having low learning outcomes, high dropout rates and low resilience to shock. This transition to digital learning will be especially challenging within these countries.

We should realise that relying exclusively on online strategies would imply reaching only children from well-off families and it will only expose the country’s deep digital divide.

In poorer families, the situation is very mixed: Even if all of them possess smartphones and televisions, many children still do not have a desk, books, internet connectivity, a laptop at home, or supportive parents. If we do not act appropriately, the vast inequality of opportunities will be amplified.

The government should focus on Remote learning strategies rather than only on online strategies with the objective of reaching as many students as possible.

In contexts where digital solutions are less accessible, the government should consider low-tech approaches.

Radio and Television were always used as a medium of instruction in past thus they can be proved as very powerful tools. The government can provide resources such as radios, textbooks, study guides and equipment to the poorest. Emergency Radio/TV Education Program or Learning Continuity Programs could be broadcasted based on the primary and secondary school curricula in core subjects including Math, English and civic education. It might not work, or prove to be a poor substitute for schools, but it can solve the purpose of reaching to masses during the crisis.

The advantage we have today is that through social networks, WhatsApp or SMS, administrators can communicate effectively with parents and teachers and provide guidelines, instructions and structure to the learning process.

The government should ensure time flexibility in the content delivery and allow self-paced learning so as not to prevent children who often shoulder the burden of care and responsibility at their homes. This can be accompanied through free call-in numbers for asking questions, or through establishing remote tutoring by involving a large number of government schoolteachers.

School closures will result in slower learning progress. The poorest children are likely to fall further behind their richer peers. There are possibilities that these children might have forgotten everything they have learned at school before corona crisis. To compensate the lost learning accelerated syllabus can be designed in advance focusing on core subjects like reading, writing and arithmetic.

Large-scale assessment strategies can be planned in advance that can identify learning gaps and inform remedial programming.

Catch up courses should be planned so as to provide learning opportunities to these children as soon as they are back to school so that they can catch up to grade level rapidly.

Training Modules for teachers/volunteers should be designed in advance for – sensitizing community about the continuation of education, learning progress tracking, assuring students re-entry in the schools, adoption of flexible learning approaches so that the children will not be deterred from returning to school when they re-open, developing low cost and low-tech reading and writing material, providing psychological support sessions to students and parents.

It might happen that this vulnerable group of children suffers from stress, stigma and isolation.

Life will definitely return to normal but pre-planned recovery efforts can offer a number of opportunities to “build back better” from curriculum to providing support to the neediest pupils or we should wait as what this COVID crisis will reveal about our education system?

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