The education system all over the world has taken a massive hit because of the Covid-19 pandemic which has caused more than a year-long learning gap among students. Educationists and policymakers must come upon a solution for this major problem.
The prosperity of a nation depends on its education system. The more efficient the system is, the more intellectuals are produced in the country. However, for the past year because of the pandemic, all educational institutions stayed shut for the welfare of the young generation so that the virus does not spread. Low and middle-income countries are suffering the most because they have are relying heavily on their education system to make intellectuals. As for the statistical point of view, since April 2020, 94% of students or 1.6 billion children have been out of school worldwide. The South Asia region stands to lose up to USD 622 billion from the school closures besides substantial learning losses.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF South Asia) organised an online seminar programme, ‘Education in Pandemic: Fulfilling Learning Gap Among Students’. This programme discussed how to overcome the learning gap students faced during the pandemic; and what roles the schools, entrepreneurs and the government can play in doing so.
Roshan Gandhi, Chief Executive Officer of City Montessori School in India, moderated the seminar. The panelists were Abdullah Ahmadzai (Country Representative of The Asia Foundation in Afghanistan), Sarkar Pudasaini (Technologist and Educator from Nepal) and Mona Mathur (Founder and CEO of Million Sparks Foundation in India).
Moderator Roshan Gandhi started the seminar with a basic question for the panelists. He wanted to know the impact that Covid-19 imposed on the learning gap amongst students.
Abdullah Ahmadzai mentioned that the activity of private schools started before the public schools but because of the pandemic, the government had to shut down all educational institutions. He also said, “Essentially in terms of packaging the impact of the pandemic in the education sector, we can easily conclude that Afghanistan lost a full academic year due to the pandemic.”
“The honest answer of what has happened to the learning gap is that we don’t really know. There hasn’t been any systematic study of what has happened in the last year in terms of school closure,” said Sarkar Pudaisini. He added that students did not really learn anything last year due to schools staying closed. Therefore, the impact as Sarkar Pudaisini said, “cannot be good”.
Mona Mathur added that before the pandemic, India was making quite a lot of progress in ensuring children attend schools. However, since the pandemic, all schools have remained closed. She added, “There have been some studies indicating that children have lost about 90 per cent of what they remember on their reading skills and 85 per cent of their numeracy skills of what they were left with last year. But the data is really far from reality since it was done on a small portion of the population.”
Coming to the solutions, Roshan Gandhi asked the panelists, “What could be done by the educational institutions and educators to emerge from this learning loss?”
“Quality education begins with first training our teachers, how to talk, interact and transfer knowledge to the students,” said Mona Mathur. She strongly believes that in order to emerge from this situation, the teachers must be able to comprehend the situation of the students. Since the past year has been sort of a mental trauma for the students, the teachers and the educational administrators must blend in with the situation and use different methods to make school a safe environment for students.
Sarkar Pudaisini agreed and stated that the school environment should be ‘fun and happy’ for the children. “Since phone is a feature that everyone has, our Public Private Partnership institutions have been calling the students home in a conference and reading stories to them including sending educational materials to their home, keeping in touch with their mental health, etc.”
Talking about the entrepreneurs and other non-governmental organisations, Roshan Gandhi wanted the opinion of the panelists on how they can help to emerge from the learning loss situation.
Mona Mathur stated that, “To restart learning, the important ingredient is the presence of a teacher or a community member who can engage the children in a conversation to get them to learn. It can only happen by mobilising our teachers first.”
“In non-governmental organisations, I think more investments need to go into ‘affordable private schools’ which don't need that big of an investment. The most important part is that the educators need to be given a chance to transfer knowledge to the students,” said Abdullah Ahmadzai.
For the final question, Roshan Gandhi wanted to know from the panelists what the government could do to assist the education sector to emerge from this situation.
Sarkar Pudaisini believed that the government and its policies are effective but to execute these fully, they need more practice of the policies. He also mentioned that the local government should have more freedom in running the schools.
“I think increasing the duration of the academic year would be a good way for the government to assist the education sector.” Talking about a new study programme, Abdullah Ahmadzai added, “We also created a study programme for adults who missed school. Students are going to study 12 months where each 6 months they graduate to another grade. I believe this is something which should be reconsidered by the government.”