Staggering impact of Covid-19 on education system

The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a health crisis. Many countries have (rightly) decided to close schools, colleges. These interruptions will not just be a short-term issue, but can also have long-term consequences for the affected cohorts and are likely to increase inequality. 

Going to school is the best public policy tool available to raise skills. While school time can be fun and can raise social skills and social awareness, from an economic point of view the primary point of being in school is that it increases a child’s ability. Even a relatively short time in school does this; even a relatively short period of missed school will have consequences for skill growth. But can we estimate how much the COVID-19 interruption will affect learning?

The closure of schools, colleges and universities not only interrupts the teaching for students around the world; the closure also coincides with a key assessment period and many exams have been postponed or cancelled. Students in remote areas are the big sufferers as no matter how techno savy we will become still human needs humans to understand the basic concept of education.

Internal assessments are perhaps thought to be less important and many have been simply cancelled. But their point is to give information about the child’s progress for families and teachers. The loss of this information delays the recognition of both high potential and learning difficulties and can have harmful long-term consequences for the child.

In higher education many universities and colleges are replacing traditional exams with online assessment tools. This is a new area for both teachers and students.

The global lockdown of education institutions is going to cause major (and likely unequal) interruption in students’ learning; disruptions in internal assessments; and the cancellation of public assessments for qualifications or their replacement by an inferior alternative.

 But still there is always a ray of hope in darkness. Covid -19 is giving new definition to education when it comes to self-assessment and parents contribution towards their child learning process. We use to read stories, dream of mechanical teacher and virtual studies in our past time but now we are implementing them.

We tried a lot with our education reforms to build a 21st-century education system, but the results of that movement have been modest. We are still a nation at risk. We need another paradigm shift, where we look at our goals and aspirations for education, which are summed up in phrases like “No Child Left Behind,” “ *Every Student Succeeds,” and “ All Means All ,” and figure out how to build a system that has the capacity to deliver on that promise of equity and excellence in education for all of our students, and all means all. We’ve got that opportunity now. I hope we don’t fail to take advantage of it in a misguided rush to restore the status quo because as it is aptly said that .

Everything is seems to be difficult before it gets easy.

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