Friday 29th of March 2024
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   Op-ed
How to Recover Learning Loss after Pandemic?
  Date : 29-03-2024

Prof. Dr Md Mahmudul Hassan: As all the educational institutions have been closed since March 2020 to control the infection of COVID-19, the Academic Year 2020 of primary, secondary and higher secondary education of the country has come to an end and a half of the 2021 academic year is about to pass.  The same is also true for the English medium schools and the condition of universities is more fragile. After a long period, the government has announced to resume the institutions on 13 June which is a time worthy decision as the people are taking it positively and happily.

Now, it is an appropriate moment to think of recovering the losses caused by the closure of educational institutions. According to the World Bank, about 36 million students in Bangladesh have missed out on the opportunity to learn properly and interact with their peers, which has affected their learning experience. To help students cope with the adverse effects of school closures, the Bangladesh government introduced distance learning through television, mobile phones, radio and the Internet. A study by the World Bank says that less than 50 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 15 had access to radio, computers and television, respectively and almost all of them have access to mobile phones but many do not have access to the internet. World Bank survey said that about 58% of Bangladeshi children under the age of 5 in the pre-pandemic were not able to achieve minimum reading skills, but it has increased to 76% after closing institutions during the pandemic.

After having such crisis in the education system, there should be some key measures to recover the learning losses after resumption of the educational institutions as discussed below:

1.  With the onset of corona, the Bangladesh government quickly decided to continue education by providing multiple remote learning model platforms.  It is now important to make these platforms fully operational through content development and lesson delivery.  Since digital learning may not be a viable option for the poorest families, post COVID-19 physical learning packages, mobile-based lessons or face-to-face classes with other methods may be applied by maintaining social distance.

2.  It is necessary to provide effective training opportunities to the teachers as soon as the educational institutions are opened and create effective alternative opportunities for the students to overcome the losses.  The first step in ensuring this is to identify the education loss during the pandemic by properly assessing students` learning and taking care of them accordingly when they return to the classroom.

3.  Additional dropouts and absences must be reduced after opening institutions.  In this case, provision of stipends and easy transportation will help to bring back and retain children from poor families.  In addition, to maintain confidence among parents and students, it is necessary to maintain constant communication with the concerned by ensuring practical remedial study and travel arrangements.

4.  We must adopt and implement participatory development plans between government, non-government, private organizations and civil society in managing the delivery of education during and after the crisis.  It is vital for children from poor families to continue their education and ensure a stable education system after pandemic. And for this, preparing teachers for the post-COVID classroom, creating effective remedial learning models, bringing in additional resources for improved structural support and continuing to work together to solve them are most essential.

5.  Some have suggested that repetition of the entire academic year affected by the Corona pandemic could be an alternative way of overcoming the education loss.  The governments of several other countries, including the Kenyan government, have already decided to do so, believing that by repeating the whole academic year, students will all be evaluated in the same way.  However, in this case, it may take a couple of years for the students to complete their studies, which may have a negative effect on the minds of the students in our country.  So many are of the opinion that this is not a very effective option.

6.  A group of experts has suggested curriculum reduction, syllabus contraction and synthesis to curb the loss of education.  This will enable the students to concentrate on some important subjects and learn them well.  As a result, there will be no doubt about the quality of education.  India and Ontario in Canada have done the same.  Bangladesh has announced its recovery program, which includes a short syllabus for the next two years, focusing on key subjects such as secondary school mathematics, Bengali, English and science.  Many have commented that this is a beautiful plan.

 7.  Arranging additional classes at off / gap hours outside of routine lessons in post COVID periods can also be an alternative to compensating for the loss.  According to the McKinsey-UNESCO Joint Toolkit, the main way to do this is to give students more time to learn.  This can be done by short-cutting the long holidays of the year, over the weekend or by adding extra time at the end of the day.  For example, a number of countries around the world including Philippine have decided to run extra classes during the summer holidays in 2020 to make up for lost time. Such activities are called catch-up or remedial programs which are very effective in harming education.

8.  For the most disadvantaged students, small breakout groups or one-to-one tutoring can help overcome the loss of education.  The UK government has already allocated 490 million dollars for a national training program that will provide intensive care for the most marginalized students.  In Ghana, the School for Life program has used peer tutoring to help students progress through school.  In Italy, the government has already implemented a program in secondary schools where university students volunteer to teach disadvantaged students one by one.  So far its impact has been positive. Teachers are seeing a progress in students` academic performance and improved socioeconomic skills and psychological well-being, especially among students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

9.  Reducing the academic year to a later three-year or four-year plan can also be a good option to overcome the loss of education.  If it is reduced to at least three months from each academic year, this loss of education will be compensated after three / four years.  Similarly, in universities, it is possible to complete another semester in one year by subtracting one month from every four months` semester.  This seems to be a comparatively reasonable and effective alternative.  In Ethiopia, the Speed School Model has condensed the first three years of the primary school curriculum into 9 to 10 months.  In Nepal too, it has come down to nine months.  Thus, in the short term, this is considered to be one of the best balanced alternatives to overcome the massive loss of education caused by Pandemic.

Finally, in order to properly reflect on the above mentioned measures for recovering learning loss, the most important thing is to increase investment in education. Recruitment of adequate additional manpower, purchase of necessary equipment and development of multidimensional contents will be required to conduct such programs as catch-up, makeup or remedial, which will be of great help in teaching and training.  According to a World Bank investigative report, for low and middle-income countries, the recovery cost is estimated to be around 35 billion, which will increase due to the second wave of Corona. However, we have to take proper measure to improve our education by recovering serious losses of learning system of Bangladesh.

 

Author: Prof. Dr Md Mahmudul Hassan is a Writer, Education Researcher and Principal of the Daffodil International School, Dhaka.

 



  
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