IMPACT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN EDUCATION

Dr. Ditas Therese T. Ramos

The early termination of school year 2019-2020 on the second week of March this year had caused negative impacts to education. Caught unprepared, educators had to scramble urgent plan of action during that time. Nevertheless, no organization can be fully prepared for any health crisis much more for a viral pandemic.

According to Burgess (2020), 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 academic point of view the primary point of being in school is that it increases a child’s ability. In this line of thinking, a shortened academic year means an abbreviated skills formation for school children. Another specific impact of the pandemic quarantine is the aborted holding of closing rites of graduating students. The road to this momentous event was littered with uncertainties as to their final requirements to graduate and as to the graduation rite itself. In the end, many schools resorted to online graduation.

The current appreciation for distance learning in global scale might be generally positive, seen as likely to be effective. But typically, this role is seen as a complement to the input from school. Parents supplement a child’s math learning by practicing counting or highlighting simple math problems in everyday life; or they illuminate history lessons with trips to important monuments or museums. Being the prime driver of learning, even in conjunction with online materials, is a different question; and while many parents round the world do successfully school their children at home, this seems unlikely to generalize over the whole population. So while global home schooling will surely produce some inspirational moments, some angry moments, some fun moments and some frustrated moments, it seems very unlikely that it will on average replace the learning lost from school.

Exit assessments were not administered before the end of the school year and entrance assessments are predicted to be administered poorly in the coming academic year. 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 (Andersen, 2019).

For Filipino learners and educators, the impact of COVID-19 to schools and on education are both practical and sentimental. Practical because it changes the pattern and expectations of teachers, learners, parents, and the community when it comes to the conduct and delivery of education. Certain adjustments and urgent changes are required in order to cope with the pandemic and it has to come along with adapting to the new normal education settings. The health crisis becomes a possible birth site of an education crisis if educators and community leaders fail to react with urgency and ingenuity. The immediate impacts – education delivery modes, school engagement and work arrangement, socialization and activities. These realities cannot escape affecting the sentimental and psychological aspects of people. For this reason, education leaders made sure that the mental health and psychosocial well-being of learners, teachers, and parents are considered in planning and implementation of support programs.

The negative impact of COVID-19 in education and to the communities can be mitigated if all stakeholders will contribute towards the aim of protecting and promoting the rights of the children to safe and nourishing environment – as well as to their needs for education.

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I at Delos Remedios Elementary School, Bamban East District,

DepEd Tarlac Province

The author is Principal