We can agree that things will never be the same again. This often-repeated statement seems to have come alive for the world in general, as millions wrestle with the results of the disastrous coronavirus pandemic. Education is one of the sectors currently struggling with a seemingly lost sense of direction and purpose. For the majority of learners globally, 2020 is a lost year. In many countries, current grades and levels of the education system will be revisited in 2021 to normalise the education system.
Eventually, there will be considerable confusion as the same cohorts will not be chronologically at par within countries and externally. Students across the education spectrum are expected to be back in classes in 2021 if the number of coronavirus infections is negligible. Tertiary institutions will have some latitude to continue with the 2019/ 2020 academic year, but only for those colleges that have managed to sustain a credible mode of online instruction and assessment.
Closure of schools and other learning spaces has impacted 94 per cent of the world’s student population, up to 99 per cent in low and lower-middle-income countries. Even countries with low incidences of the pandemic are finding restarting the school calendar the trickiest bit in their reopening puzzle.
Another group that has been dramatically affected by the pandemic is the teaching community. Millions of teachers and university lecturers have been laid off. Over 50 per cent of this teaching staff will not come back either, as many institutions of learning, mainly private ones, will not survive the pandemic.
For children, the pandemic has taught lessons that no classroom or lecture hall would have offered. First, they have learned that contrary to the invincible role models they admire, and incredible human feats they have aspired to achieve, the world is, for all intents and purposes, an extremely vulnerable place.
For millions of children, learning might move permanently from the classroom to the sitting room. As noted, many schools will not survive this crisis. It will not be possible to absorb the millions of locked-out children in the existing schools, particularly in poor and highly populated countries.
With the online experience already gaining traction, there is a high possibility that the internet will become an established and official channel of instruction. Parents will have the option of choosing the kind of schooling experience for their children: in-person or virtual learning.
Secondly, as the nature of work undergoes a model shift, it will place similar demands on the education system. Experts believe that employers and recruiters will give more weight to dependable and impeccable skill sets, rather than the mere acquisition of academic certificates.
Nevertheless, it is time for stocktaking. Even before the coronavirus worsening, the education system was burdened by severe systemic challenges centring on the shortage of resources and access. Overcoming these twin bottlenecks will inform the structure and objectives of the ensuing education system.
The overarching objective of education must now lay more emphasis on experiential learning and multi-tasking. Moreover, the redundancy of many careers means that knowledge will be a lifelong process, with learning on the job becoming a crucial part of professional training.
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