Transforming Education

Aries C. Sanchez

Every country is grappling with difficult questions and balancing public health and reopening schools at a time when many families are suffering economically as become an endless debate across the globe. The scale of this crisis is already huge: 1 billion students and children are out of school because of COVID-19 today and 100 countries have yet to announce a date for schools to be open. I think that it's really a huge risk of losing an entire generation. As we could see from the very beginning of school closures, the longer the schools remain closed, the higher the risk of increasing inequalities and learning loss. As to those increased inequalities and learning loss you're talking about, what groups are most vulnerable from missing out on their education and why? Well, the most vulnerable and fragile components of the education community I can mention children with disabilities, where we could see from the beginning that moving from the traditional classroom to the virtual ones is not everywhere a guarantee of making the best way to address their specific special needs for education, for instance, that we can have increasing numbers of dropouts. We can have increasing numbers of early pregnancy. And of course, it's about refugees and migrants and displaced students, where the situation of learning is already very much complicated. This is a national crisis and a global one. And there is no national solution. We can take measures that can work on the basis of some general principles and mention them. The first is about reopening schools when safe to do so. After the green light from health authorities, schools need to put measures in place for safe return. And it's about also targeting the students who are hardest to reach. Most vulnerable components of the student communities. And it's absolutely important that, also in the this specific target can be As it's defined, means putting together radio channels, TV channels and elearning platforms where you can use it and have connectivity is something that can work for instance, where this blended learning is working a bit as students continue to learn it. On the other side, that there are some dimensions of learning and teaching that cannot be replaced easily. Parents became a bit, the main actors of the process — suddenly. And this is another interesting component, right, that you have to take into account. And let say that maybe in the future, there is a lot of room for rethinking the future of education, which is right now in the present. Also, including better, more communities and families, first starting from parents. Of course, it's about rethinking the space of learning. It's also rethinking the time of learning, which is no more, maybe confined, restricted, to some hours in the morning. So, I see in this sense an interesting innovation, which can be important for rethinking and transforming education.

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The author is Teacher I at Mabiga Elementary School, Division of Mabalacat

City