Adapting to the New Normal: The Education System in times of Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed devastation on over a billion students' lives— half of the world's students have seen their schools or colleges close to ease the spread of the virus. Thus, numerous educational institutions are moving to online learning. While a few educators can post their learning materials online for their students, but for other people, the transition to online learning requires access and the legal rights to utilize and modify such materials created by others. For some students and teachers, particularly in low-income countries, access to these educational materials is a day by day battle, even in normal times. In light of a horde of hindrances, for example, the restrictive expense of learning resources, or the lawful labyrinth of tangled copyright rules and exceptions, numerous students are denied their central basic human right to education.

At the point when COVID-19 lockdowns were forced in March across the country, classes in many schools were at that point ending. In addition, the pandemic will differentially affect students from various families, in manners more unfavorable to the poor and in any case the marginalized sector. They will be bound to endure the brunt of the decrease in economy brought about by the pandemic. Accordingly, the disturbance caused by the pandemic to the learning of most students was massive. It is a well-known fact that remote learning represents a great deal of difficulties for some Filipino students. On the other hand, purchasing a personal laptop, computer, or even a tablet or cell phone is not an all nighter.

Moreover, making sure that there is an access to an internet connection isn't something that all Filipino parents can undoubtedly provide for their children regardless of the amount they might want to. Tragically, the equipment can just go up until this point. Not everyone has access to fast, dependable, or even useful internet connection, uncovering a huge disconnection between the country's city center and more distant zones. As the educational disparities increase other social and financial discrepancy, and as structural imbalances are compounded, the gaps between the haves and the have nots will develop significantly.

Making the children of the poor ought to have seriously more restricted opportunities to learn during the pandemic than their non-poor counterparts, and that their lives ought to be fundamentally more disturbed by the pandemic, which is obviously contradictory to the basic tenets of democracy, so as the possibility that this is what is going on, this will subvert trust in democracy and its institutions, which is apparently ineffective in numerous st at es.

This is a grim picture of how the Covid-19 Pandemic will shape the educational sphere, and the future for the next decades to come.

Likewise with the health impact of the pandemic, the educational outcome will be interceded by how people react, by the activities or exclusions of students, guardians, instructors and school administrators. A few reactions are bound to relieve the educational impact while different responses will enlarge the negative effect of the pandemic.

The most exceedingly terrible reaction from educators is disregard the educational significance of the pandemic, to think that this isn't an educational issue, that it be short, or that the outcomes on education will be insignificant.

Therefore, “Equity should be placed at the core of education interventions to provide the same learning opportunity to children who are most vulnerable and are from the most marginalized communities.

Inability to address these fuels inequality and reverses progress made in recent decades,” UNICEF stated. In a pandemic, we are all connected, and thus the risks and rewards associated with our decisions affect not only ourselves but also one another.

Thus, the crisis does remind us that we all need to be smarter and more responsible with the limited resources we have so we can add resilience to the education systems on which the world’s children depend.