Essay on social awareness. On impact of
coronavirus on education.
Answers
Answer:
As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, so do
the risks we face. The COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped
at national borders. It has affected people regardless of
nationality, level of education, income or gender. But the same
has not been true for its consequences, which have hit the
most vulnerable hardest.
Education is no exception. Students from privileged
backgrounds, supported by their parents and eager and able to
learn, could find their way past closed school doors to alternative
learning opportunities. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds
often remained shut out when their schools shut down.
This crisis has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities
in our education systems – from access to the broadband and
computers needed for online education, and the supportive
environments needed to focus on learning, up to the
misalignment between resources and needs.
The lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have interrupted
conventional schooling with nationwide school closures in
most OECD and partner countries, the majority lasting at
least 10 weeks. While the educational community have made
concerted efforts to maintain learning continuity during this
period, children and students have had to rely more on their
own resources to continue learning remotely through the
Internet, television or radio. Teachers also had to adapt to
new pedagogical concepts and modes of delivery of teaching,
for which they may not have been trained. In particular,
learners in the most marginalised groups, who don’t have
access to digital learning resources or lack the resilience and
engagement to learn on their own, are at risk of falling behind.
Hanushek and Woessman have used historical growth
regressions to estimate the long-run economic impact of this
loss of the equivalent to one-third of a year of schooling for
the current student cohort. Because learning loss will lead to
skill loss, and the skills people have relate to their productivity,
gross domestic product (GDP) could be 1.5% lower on average
for the remainder of the century. The present value of the total
cost would amount to 69% of current GDP for the typical
country. These estimates assume that only the cohort currently
in school are affected by the closures and that all subsequent
cohorts resume normal schooling. If schools are slow to
return to prior levels of performance, the growth losses will
be proportionately higher. Of course, slower growth from the
loss of skills in today’s students will only be seen in the long
term. However, when considered over this term, the impact
becomes significant. In other words, countries will continue
to face reduced economic well-being, even if their schools
immediately return to pre-pandemic levels of performance.
For example, for the United States, if the student cohorts in
school during the 2020 closures record a corona-induced loss
of skills of one-tenth of a standard deviation and if all cohorts
thereafter return to previous levels, the 1.5% loss of future GDP
would be equivalent to a total economic loss of USD 15.3 trillion
(Hanushek E and Woessman L, forthcoming[1]).
The COVID-19 pandemic has also had a severe impact
on higher education as universities closed their premises
and countries shut their borders in response to lockdown
measures. Although higher education institutions were quick
to replace face-to-face lectures with online learning, these
closures affected learning and examinations as well as the
safety and legal status of international students in their
host country. Perhaps most importantly, the crisis raises
questions about the value offered by a university education
which includes networking and social opportunities as well as
educational content. To remain relevant, universities will need
to reinvent their learning environments so that digitalisation
expands and complements student-teacher and other
relationships.
Reopening schools and universities will bring unquestionable
benefits to students and the wider economy. In addition,
reopening schools will bring economic benefits to families
by enabling some parents to return to work. Those benefits,
however, must be carefully weighed against the health risks
and the requirement to mitigate the toll of the pandemic. The
need for such trade-offs calls for sustained and effective co-
ordination between education and public health authorities at
different levels of government, enhanced by local pa