Supporting teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

That said, COVID-19 infections among children in the US increased 40% across 49 states during the last two weeks of July according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association released on July 30th. Understandably, this has raised alarm among many parents whose states have announced a physical start of the 2020-21 school year.

In addition to children, measures to keep teachers and school staff safe need to be taken as well. First, it is important to determine how many of them may have conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness if they were to contract COVID-19. An analysis in the US estimates that 1 in 4 American teachers would be at higher risk if they were to get sick. Education systems also need to plan: i) how to respond to shortage of teachers, either if they become sick or if more are needed to comply with smaller class sizes, ii) medical coverage for teachers and coverage of their sick leave. In countries such as Denmark, France, and Italy, teachers’ unions were actively involved in the school reopening discussions and the provision of universal healthcare in those countries alleviated some concerns.

Address Infrastructure/learning environment safety As key physical factors contribute to better infrastructure and a safer learning environment for students and teachers, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed vulnerabilities, including in schools of advanced education systems The average 15 year-old student in OECD countries has spent 7,538 hours inside school buildings, where sometimes the lack of proper ventilation and stagnate air create opportunities for virus spreading. Some measures that countries can consider are to enhance proper ventilation, providing hand washing facilities and other sanitization measures inside school buildings and educating people to use them, as well as establishing clear guidance on whether the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) would be required and in what circumstances. There are some good practices of repurposing school environments, like large sports halls into the learning spaces, rearranging the food facilities etc. Many question if it’s possible for teachers to wear masks at all times, countries such as France require them to use masks when they are less than a meter away from students, while England is considering not to require the use of masks at all. The silver lining of COVID-19 for schools is that the learning environments started to be considered with IT infrastructure and remote learning as a whole, potentially expanding ways of learning and collaborating.

A path towards continuity of learning – Flexibility is key to mitigate learning loss As the global debate and efforts roll forward, it should be noted that the return of students to physical classrooms on a global scale remains an exception rather than the norm, as over one billion students (approximately two thirds of the world’s learners) in over 110 countries are still impacted by school closures and may not see their classrooms for some time. This will have detrimental impact on students’ schooling attainment and learning, and accumulation of human capital across countries. By World Bank estimates, school closures to date could result in a loss of 0.6 years of schooling adjusted for quality, bringing down the effective years of basic schooling that children achieve during their schooling life from 7.9 years to 7.3 years, resulting in billions of dollars of lost future wages. (Simulating the Potential Impact of COVID19 and School Closures on Schooling and Learning Outcomes: A Set of Global Estimates) For students across the world the COVID-19 pandemic has already changed the way they learn and where they learn. Flexibility seems to be the foundation of any strategy on reopening schools: a cautious reopening, and readiness to close again if outbreaks emerge. This is not easy in education systems that are historically steeped in tradition and rigidity. But to balance safety and learning, a most effective approach has been to couple physical and remote education, allowing a switch between the two with minimal disruptions.