A gigantic educational crisis?

With no warning whatsoever, we find ourselves confronted with what has been described as “one of the greatest threats in our lifetime to global education, a gigantic educational crisis.” What is unfolding provides more than sufficient evidence that this is not an exaggeration.

The global response to COVID-19 has, understandably, focused overwhelmingly, on the threat that it poses to our physical well-being. It would, however, be an error to take the position that we must first ‘see off’ the threat to our physical selves before we begin to address the various other crises that have emerged from the advent of the Coronavirus and which, if not addressed, can wreak no less havoc with the way we live. Some issues, like education, make an eminent case for no less urgent attention.

As the virus rages, science continues to proffer prognoses for its eventual disappearance, never mind the fact that the issue of a cure is far from set in stone at this time. Rather, scientific minds are moving beyond the virus itself, proffering twilight zone-like prognoses that raise questions as to what might be the next ‘something out there’ in what they now appear to see as a sort of ‘twilight zone.’

The Coronavirus, meanwhile, also raises other practical real-world issues. Back in April the World Bank announced that around 1.6 billion children (more than 80% of the global school population) in 161 countries were being kept out of school on account of global school closures occasioned by the coronavirus outbreak. As of now, with millions of children still out of school (it is now two months since schools were closed in Guyana) and there being no telling at this time when full normalcy will be restored to the global school system, the likely long-term cumulative effect of the protracted termination of conventional classroom tuition has now become, next to health considerations, the most widely discussed COVID-19-related issue.

Here, it is apposite to note that the coronavirus-initiated global schools’ closure has come amidst what the World Bank also says, was already a situation in which the percentage of children who cannot read and understand at the age of 10 stood at 53% in low and middle income countries, the implication here being that the unanticipated shutdown of schools across the world at this time is likely to make an already bad situation worse.

Here in Guyana, where our education system is already plagued by longstanding and seemingly intractable deficiencies, arguably the most immediate challenge, once classes get going again, will be the extent of the ‘catchup’ effort that will be required to make up for tuition time lost on account of the closure of schools. As of

now, it is hard to see how that time can be made up at all. But the present is not the only worry. Experienced educationists are already suggesting that the actual impact of the Coronavirus on our education system may well not be fully felt until a few years down the road when the skills gaps arising out of the current challenge begin to appear.

Now that the situation requires that we act rather than prevaricate there are complicated ‘calculations’ that our educationists must make regarding the creation of a damage-limitation regime. For example, in the absence of long-entrenched examinations (that have had to be set aside) to move children from one level to another, what criteria do we now apply and how do we get around some of the controversies that could well arise out of having to change the extant criteria? These issues, mind you, are yet to be fully explained by the authorities.

If many of the more telling effects of the current extended closure of schools are likely to be longerterm, some of the consequences will doubtless make their presence felt much earlier. There is, for example, the considerable likelihood that some children from poor families will not ever return to school, having found themselves various unskilled, lowpaying jobs which, in their particular circumstances, they may now consider to be more worthwhile options than returning to the classroom. Here, (who knows?) the numbers may well be higher than we might imagine. Then there is the likely impact of the prolonged closure of schools on the state of health of children (particularly in the hinterland regions) who, on account of the extended school ‘break,’ would not have, for several weeks, benefitted from their most important meal of the day made available through the school meals’ system. Are these likely to be physically and emotionally ready for a return to the classroom?

Here in Guyana much of the education-related discourses arising out of the advent of the Coronavirus have revolved around how efforts to implement a stop-gap regimen of virtual learning to help compensate for the suspension of physical classes have been faring. In essence, what these discourses have revealed (as if we didn’t know this previously) is that we are light years away from being sufficiently equipped to deliver an across-the-board virtual teaching/learning regime that affords equal access/equal opportunity. The extent of the information technology infrastructure gap between the hinterland and coastal regions, for example, means that we are unable to deliver anything even remotely resembling a fair and balanced virtual teaching/learning regime across the country. In effect, there is the very real danger that not only will the Coronavirus and its consequences have the overall effect of setting back our education system, but that it could, as well, render even wider the already huge gap between coastal and hinterland education.

Setting aside the evident underdevelopment of our national public telecommunications/ICT infrastructure, what the advent of the Coronavirus has laid bare in an unprecedented manner is the disparity in access to what one might call the learning tools (computers, lap-tops, smart phones et. al) between coastal and hinterland students. If there is little if anything that can be done to correct this situation in the immediate term, the disparity speaks volumes about the extent of the effort that we have made, particularly over the past two decades or so, to better position students from hinterland communities. Here is a timely reminder, if indeed one were needed, that the aforementioned learning tools are now critical to the teaching/learning process, so that the issues of access and affordability need to be addressed by government with renewed urgency.

There is, as well, what, in this day and age, is the altogether unacceptable cutoff of some hinterland communities from both electricity of telecommunication services. Where these deficiencies exist, the disparity in access to education (particularly in times like these) becomes even wider.

Having come to terms with their in-country technology gaps between and amongst regions, there are examples of poorer countries that now employ innovative education delivery methods that strike a balance between conventional teaching/learning and on on-line delivery strategies. The success of this approach, which, incidentally, makes much greater use of the more traditional communication vehicles including radio, television and newspapers, has, over time, been well documented. Without questioning the validity of aspiring to new and arguably more efficient technology, what our present circumstances teach us is that there is still much merit in continuing to strengthen and apply those traditional communication tools in the delivery of education in circumstances where the contemporary ones remain either non-existent or seriously underdeveloped. It is perhaps not by accident that the Ministry of Education has opted to retain its decades-old radio programmes, Broadcasts to Schools and Talking About Education, notwithstanding the fact that these programmes do not appear to benefit from planned feedback/listener analysis) aimed at determining reach and impact.

How to respond to the challenges visited upon our education system by the advent of the coronavirus requires, in the first instance, commitment, enlightened minds, a carefully thought-out strategy that presses every resource into service and perhaps above everything else the discipline and focus to see the on-the-ground implementation of planned strategies through to the end. Many of these assets are lacking in the planning and implementing of these initiatives in developing countries, not least, Guyana. COVID-19, for all the toll that it continues to take, is an experience that must help equip us for challenges to our civilization that may be yet to come.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men

to the divine - Ludwig van Beethoven