By: UBAID HUSSAIN
The corona pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, leading to the near-total closures of schools, early childhood education and care services, universities as well as colleges. Most governments decided to temporarily close down educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus and as of January 2021, approximately 825 million learners were affected due to school closures. Early childhood education and care as well as school closures impacted not only students, teachers, and families but have far-reaching economic and societal consequences. The impact was more severe for disadvantaged children and their families, causing interrupted learning, compromised nutrition, childcare problems, and consequent economic cost to families who could not work.In response to school closures, UNESCO recommended the use of distance learning programs and open educational applications and platforms that schools and teachers can use to reach learners remotely and limit the disruption of education.
The corona pandemic has introduced uncertainty into major aspects of national and global societies and there is uncertainty about how school closures last spring impacted student achievement as well as how the rapid conversion of instruction to an online platform this academic year will continue to affect achievement. Without exact data on how the virus impacts student learning, making informed decisions about whether and when to return to in-person instruction remains difficult to garner. Even now, education leaders must grapple with seemingly impossible choices that balance health risks associated with in-person learning against the educational needs of children, which may be better served when kids are in their physical schools.
School closures due to COVID-19 have brought significant disruptions to education across the world. Emerging evidence from some of the region’s highest-income countries indicates that the pandemic is giving rise to learning losses and increases in inequality. To reduce and reverse the long-term negative effects, Ukraine and other less-affluent lower-middle-income countries, which are likely to be even harder hit, need to implement learning recovery programs, protect educational budgets, and prepare for future shocks.
At the peak of the pandemic, 45 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region closed their schools, affecting 185 million students. Given the abruptness of the situation, teachers and administrations were unprepared for this transition and were forced to build emergency remote learning systems almost immediately.
One of the limitations of emergency remote learning is the lack of personal interaction between teacher and student. With broadcasts, this is simply not possible. However, several countries showed initiative by using other methods to improve the remote educational experience, including social media, email, telephone, and even the post office.
