The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified the changing face of education and brought to light a learning crisis like no other, with reports of over 1.6 billion children being affected by school closures globally. While the specific impacts of school closures on learning outcomes are still being uncovered, it is evident that in many contexts, the Covid-19 pandemic has further broadened learning disparities between those who have access to technology and educational resources and those who do not.
This is particularly evident among the most marginalized and vulnerable communities, especially children with disabilities and special learning needs. A Save the Children global study stated that “progress that had been made against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for children is at risk of being disrupted, or even lost. For many children, the impacts of the pandemic will be catastrophic.”
Home environment
The closure of schools and the rise of distance learning increased the care burden on already overburdened caregivers who have faced increased stress from the other impacts of the pandemic, namely potential job in-security, personal and family health concerns, and more.
While parents from middle and high income groups struggled with balancing work and home as well as children learning and adjusting to the new normal, the worst affected were the most marginalized communities, who were in dire straits. These caregivers and parents, in many instances, also faced challenges regarding the capacity, time, or skillset to support at-home learning, which further impacted children in ensuring a conducive home learning environment.
With a lack of access to income and basic necessities and having to stay in confined spaces due to the restrictions -- there was a marked impact on the home environment.
A number of global studies have highlighted the devastating impacts on the lives of children, including clear indicators suggesting a rise in violence and abuse against children. With minimal access to psycho-social and mental health support , many adults and children have struggled, and continue to struggle, in the aftermath of Covid.
Teachers and educators
Overnight, teachers and educators have been required to use a new set of technologies and skills, often without access to technological infrastructure and resources, as well as proper training.
In a number of low-income countries, technology is not an element of school infrastructure nor is it part of any teacher training priorities. Therefore, the sudden need for a shift to online and hybrid teaching modalities left teachers and school leaders scrambling to access students, prepare for online lessons, and deliver them effectively while also managing the many challenges they faced in their own homes.
The heterogeneity in lack of access to technology and its usage globally has been further highlighted due to the pronounced impact on lower income countries.
No one was prepared for the length of the pandemic and while in many of the low-income countries, there were adaptations such as distance learning packs and TV and radio programs developed for continuous access to learning, several questions remain:
● How effective were these interventions?
● How accessible were they for the most marginalized children?
● Was there anything done to reach and access children with disabilities to ensure they had any kind of access to learning?
Children and learning
Children across the globe were affected but the most marginalized and deprived children were the most affected, bringing to the forefront the existing inequalities and lack of equity in access to quality education. With no access to learning and support at home and limited internet connectivity and devices to access online portals, a number of children lost out on any kind of access to learning.
When schools reopened, children returned to an environment where they had to catch up on lost material and move to new classes, thus facing a huge gap in learning with no time to catch up. Children have also had a marked impact on their mental health, with studies showing the need to focus on socio-emotional support for children, both inside and outside the classroom.
What now?
Covid has exacerbated a number of issues, especially in terms of education and access for marginalized or vulnerable children. It is absolutely essential that educators, school leaders, teachers, and the national and local authorities first stop and accept that children have faced a situation that will have a long term impact on their learning unless it is addressed. Being out of school for months and in some cases even a year or more can not be treated as a minor hiccup; the magnitude and loss to learning has to be understood, assessed, and addressed.
The pandemic has magnified the changing face of education and the need for multi-dimensional approaches. Children need support both for their psycho-social well-being as well as access to education that is focused on giving the learner and their needs the primary importance.
Teachers need to be supported on strategies that support struggling learners to help them work on key competencies and also encourage their learning journey. Teaching pedagogy needs to be more inclusive to provide equitable opportunities for learners at different levels so that in this day and age with so much knowledge at our fingertips,children don’t continue to be left out of the learning system. While adaptations were done, there has been no clear measurements on the outcomes of the use of distance learning , TV/radio, and its impact on children’s learning outcomes.
Learning and instruction has to be adapted and changed to reflect the current needs of students by assessing students’ learning needs and target instruction, focusing on foundational skills and competencies, and also look at catch-up programs to help bridge the learning gap.
Curriculums need to be revisited and adapted to support learning with an approach to assess curricula across and within subjects to prioritize the most important skills and knowledge required for a student at each grade, with importance being given to foundational learning skills such as literacy, numeracy, and basic social-emotional competencies.
As parents, community members, and professionals, we need to focus on the needs of our children and understand that we are in a situation like no other. We need to come together and work with policy makers and educators to recover from the catastrophic Covid learning loss and support our children to recover and rebuild so they can move forward.
Arathi Vinodh is the Education Director with Save the Children in Bangladesh and has been working in the space of Education and in development and humanitarian settings for over 12 years.