Corona Negatively Impacts The Education Sector

With a phased approach to reopening of primary and secondary schools looming, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions on efforts to ensure access to quality education for students.

On July 28, Forms Six, Four and Grade Seven classes are scheduled to resume while the Lower Six, Form Three and Grade 6 pupils will follow three weeks later.

The rest of the grades will follow suit in phased stages as well.

New dynamics to learning already have an adverse impact on the quality of education pushing the globe including Zimbabwe off the track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal Four.

The goal commits nations to ensure all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education among other targets.

Having been locked down in homes for about three months, Zimbabwean pupils are now resorting to online learning, which entails receiving tutorials on various platforms including emails, social media platform WhatsApp or listening to radio presentations.

This already poses a challenge for children who come from poor backgrounds and may not afford a computer, access to digital gadgets, and money to subscribe to internet or purchase data.

An article by Unesco titled Build back better: Education must change after Covid-19 to meet the climate crisis notes that school closures in over 180 countries have laid bare inequalities in education, deficiencies in remote learning, the cost of the digital divide, as well as the important role schools play in student health and well-being.

Zimbabwe is not alone in the quagmire of trying to negotiate the education sector terrain in the midst of the pandemic.

According to a World Bank 2020 report dubbed the Covid-19 pandemic; Shocks to Education and Policy Responses, learning inequality will increase, because only students from wealthier and more educated families will have the support to learn at home.

Finally, dropout risk will rise, as the lack of encouragement from teachers reduces the attachment to schooling for marginal students, the report notes.

Zimbabwe Teachers Union Secretary General, Mr Tapson Nganunu is also concerned about how the phased opening of schools will translate to less learning time.

“Resuming schools by end of July for exam writing classes and writing exams end of September would mean that they only had five months or less learning period the whole year.

“What kind of exam will they write? This definitely compromises quality of education in this particular year,” he said.

He added that with other grades having to resume learning much later, but still in a phased approach some learners, particularly ECD will have wasted year as they will resume last.

“The irony of it is that next year they proceed to a higher grade despite having learnt nothing this year,” he said.

With Zimbabwe like other African countries beginning to experience an upward increase in Covid-19 cases, the solution to ensure pupils are learning has to be community specific.

For instance, students in rural areas do not have the required gadgets or internet connectivity.

Measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 like social distancing will require infrastructure as class numbers have to be reduced.

Where students used to share books or desks, the set-up has changed.

“This speaks to review of budgets for schools. The costs of running schools will substantially increase. Only the elite schools and rich families will meet the requirements of the revised budgets,” says Mr Nganunu.

Consultation between Government, teachers, parents, students and communities is critical to map a way forward that ensures pupils have access to education and their lives are also preserved.

It is also important to have a scientific strategy to collect information necessary to evaluate the extent to which the new norm of teaching and learning is effective.

UNESCO together with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and in partnership with the European Commission are launching a study to have a more comprehensive picture of the pandemic on global education.

Global statistics state that 258 million children and youth of primary and secondary school age were out of school before the pandemic.

It remains a worry that no one knows when the pandemic will end and schools might not open for some grades for a long time to come.

Children will not have access to substantial learning time and one can only imagine the carnage during and after the pandemic.

This deals a heavy blow on the goal to ensure quality education for all.