SciDev.Net Investigates
Students’ future on hold as governments put malls before schools Neena Bhandari
A “generational catastrophe” looms as governments prioritise opening of malls over schools, resulting in huge learning losses with some 117 million children globally still af-fected by full school closures due to COVID-19 lockdowns, according to the UN Educational, Sci-entific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “You can’t open shopping malls and keep the schools closed,” UNESCO’s director of division for policies and lifelong learning systems Borhene Chakroun, tells SciDev.Net. “Governments have to take policy measures now to prevent a generational catastrophe in the future. They should reopen schools as soon as the sanitary situation allows and use closing them as the last resort.” As of late September 2021, nine countries — Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka — in the Asia Pacific region have fully closed their schools due to COVID-19, accounting for 105 million or 10 per cent of total students. As many as 51 million are primary school students, according to UNESCO. But with economies on the brink and with dwin-dling finances, many countries in the region like Malaysia, Nepal and the Philippines have reopened shopping malls, restaurants and other business es-tablishments while still keeping schools fully closed. Nine-year-old Altamash is yearning to return to school. “When will school reopen?” is a refrain his mother hears every morning. A student of Grade Four at Nigam Pratibha Vidhyalaya in Delhi’s east-ern suburb of Mayur Vihar in India, he says: “I miss my friends, my teachers, the playground and the school lunch.” Being cooped up in a two-room home for over
18 months has not been easy for his family of six. monitoring of school closures. Juggling a single device, a mobile phone, among During the foundational years of primary school, four brothers for attending online classes has been representing grades one to six, schools are more another challenge. than just places of learning. They play a huge role In March 2020, to prevent the spread of in the general cognitive and motor skills developCOVID-19, many countries began closing ment of children. schools and mo-ving to remote learning, affecting It is a place where children learn socio-emotional 1.6 billion learn-ers in developing and developed skills, such as developing friend-ships with countries alike. their peers; having access to a li-brary, sports, Schools have had to switch overnight to art and music lessons, excur-sions to museums, distance home-based learning. The Asia which all add to their gen-eral knowledge and Pacific region was largely ill-equipped for this understanding of the world. For some, it is also a sudden transition. Many countries had to cope place where the school meal is the only nutritive with limited infrastructure, costly internet meal they get in a day. This overall development service and devices, and teachers’ and learners’ and well-being contribute to their learning. readiness with digital skills. Experts say learning losses at the founda-tional Many families struggled to acquire even a single years of primary schooling have the most device. In India, 42 per cent of children between long-lasting impact on all aspects of a child’s six and 13 years reported not using any type of development. re-mote learning device during school closures. In “If children don’t get the foundational skills Pa-kistan, 23 per cent of younger children did not in primary school, they can’t reach their full have access to any device, according to UNICEF. potential in secondary school and in their “There was a myth, in the first half of 2020, that future prospects. We are yet to understand the schools can be replaced by online plat-forms,” says full extent of this [school closures],” says Save Chakroun. “Schools have to evolve to cope with the Children Australia’s team lead and senior hybrid learning and new pedagogical modalities. education advisor Nora Charif Chefchaouni. Online learning modalities have been less effective for primary school children and learning LEARNING POVERTY COMPOUNDED losses have been huge worldwide.” Even before the pandemic, about 60 per cent of During school closures, education has been provided through a combination of online classes, printed modules and worksheets, and radio and television lessons.
children in South Asia were unable to read and un-derstand a simple text at age ten. In addition, 12.5 million children at the primary level were out of school, UNICEF research shows.
For Altamash, who loves maths and science and wants to be a doctor when he grows up, it is his elder brothers in Grades Six and Nine who get priority use of the mobile phone, but they later help him with his lessons. “Reading on a small mobile telephone screen is strenu-ous unlike on a blackboard. Our teachers made learning fun and students helped each other,” he says.
This existing learning crisis has been compounded by COVID-19-led school closures, wid-ening inequities in the developing countries of the region.
LOST FORMATIVE YEARS Children have missed the hands-on experi-ence of learning and face-to-face engagement with teachers. Since the onset of the pandemic, schools have been completely closed for an average of 16 weeks in the Asia Pacific region comprising 47 countries. If partial closures by locality or educational level are factored in, the average duration of closures represents 29 weeks across the regions, ac-cording to the latest data from UNESCO HQ’s global
10 | SCIDEV.NET 20 YEARS ANNIVERSARY MAGAZINE SPECIAL EDITION
Chefchaouni tells SciDev.Net: “The quality of
