By: Dr Hazir Ullah
The COVID-19-pandemic) is not only a global public health issue, but is also a political, economic, cultural, religious and education issue. There is a crack, a crack in everything. We can see that the cracks are everywhere-on the surface and much deeper. One of the deeper cracks is the crack in the learning processes of more than one billion students around the world.
According to UNESCO, 190 countries, including Pakistan, have temporarily closed educational institutions (schools, colleges and universities) to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The lockdown of educational institutions seems to be a rational decision for effective implementation of ‘social distancing’. The closures are good, but no one really knows how long they will continue.
As of April 24, these closures had impacted 91 percent of the world’s student population. The learning of approximately 1.6 billion students has been interrupted. The covid-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the education of millions of students in Pakistan. Parents and teachers have growing concerns about the likely impact on students’ short-term learning and long-term success? The impact, no doubt, is negative and disproportionate. The closures are having more negative impact on students from low-income families or students of rural areas.
The government may think about expanding school timing to provide additional time and instruction to compensate the learning loss. The government should not opt for “social promotion”─ passing students to the next grade without they learn and qualify the contents of the existing level
Socio-economic status (SES) and geographical location do matter in short-term learning and long-term education success. SES matters to sociologists as it has a strong effect on the access an individual has to education, the quality of that education, and how high a level he or she can reach. A thick body of published literature in sociology of education has persistently pointed out that those with good SES enable their children to get good education and earn valuable credentials. The covid-19 pandemic is inflaming inequalities in education. It is following patterns of entrenched inequalities in education opportunities.
On March 13, when the Government of Pakistan decided to close educational institutions, elite private educational institutions (both schools and universities), in urban centres, started online classes to minimize the disruption to their students’ learning. For many of them, that was a small leap. Their students have educated parents, and laptops and desktops with Internet connections at home. This is not a bubstitute for the rich and meaningful learning experiences of classroom interaction. Nevertheless, in some ways, the online classes are making up some of the learning loss by keeping students engaged. In addition to their curriculum, they are learning how to use technology for education. They communicate with teachers and do lessons/assignments using email, websites, and engaged in videoconferencing. Students have formed study groups using the same technologies and educational software and apps. But they’re also losing social interaction, like sports and extracurricular activities which are as important as curriculum contents.
Keeping aside the loss in social interaction, poor internet connection, noise, lack of independent learning skills among kids and young children or emotional maturity to maintain attention, arguably these students of elite urban institutions have a learning advantage over those from disadvantaged SES who attend public educational institutions in general and those in the rural areas in particular.
From March 13 to April 14, unlike elite institutions’ students, public schools’ students (74 percent in the rural areas and 41 percent in the urban) remained unattended. Their school closures were notified ‘summer vacation’. It was only on April 14, when the Federal Education Ministry, in tandem with PTV, started the first ever teleschool in Pakistan to help public school students and minimize their learning loss. It is an appreciable initiative. I hope some students in the urban centres are getting help from the teleschool, particularly those whose parents are educated, financially secure and have a flexible working arrangement, and who know the importance of their childrens’ education.
As a sociologist of education, I have a huge concern for the majority of students in rural areas who may not be benefitting from teleschool. A long list of factors can be mentioned here to explain why. The majority of students do not have TV at home. If some do, 14 to 16 hours of unscheduled load-shedding in rural areas will not let them benefit. School closures, for low income families means children are expected to help their families. Children get engaged with their families doing agriculture, fetching wood and tending cattle. Some are even pushed into child labour. Similarly, the absence of an educational environment at home; children’s and parents’ lack of interest in schooling; household poverty; pressures of domestic responsibilities; and the absence of fathers due to outstation work are factors that will lead irreparable learning loss for these children. If the school closures extends beyond May 31, it will cause disproportionate learning-loss.
We lack academic research on how children from different SES spend their winter/summer vacations. Nevertheless, a considerable number of studies on summer/winter learning loss in the global north have persistently revealed that children from lower SES, during summer/winter vacation, do not spend engaged time in academic content compared to children from good SES. The literature on summer learning loss concludes that when students return to schools after vacations, students from low SES are falling behind students from good SES on many education performance indicators. Insight from various studies on summers/winters learning-loss enables me to argue that the pandemic is causing more learning-loss to students from low SES than students from good SES.
If schools are likely to be closed beyond May 31, people at the helm of affairs should do more than teleschool to reduce the learning loss of public schools’ students. Federal and provincial government should ensure that education has priority space in their response to the covid-19 crisis. Executive education officers, school heads, and teachers needs to be contacted to devise local strategies for teaching children in their respective areas. Since schools are closed, resources of Independent Monitoring Unit or school monitoring may be used for the education of disadvantaged students. Under the smart lockdown policy, selective reopening of schools in rural areas with COVID-19 protocols, like social distancing, wearing masks, and practicing other hygiene rules, may be considered. The government must unlock the capacities of education departments at the federal, provincial and district levels to keep education moving for the most disadvantaged students. The district education offices must play their role to ensure that students come back to schools as children from low-income families, girls in particular, did not return to schools after long vacations. When we can reopen schools during summer, the government may think about expanding school timing to provide additional time and instruction to compensate the learning loss. The government should not opt for “social promotion”─ passing students to the next grade without they learn and qualify the contents of the existing level─ as it will disable the students understanding in the next grade and will worsen the poor quality of public schools.
