Prolonged school closures have made children’s education another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sound policies and strategies are needed to make up for losses in learning and mitigate their long-term effects.
In Southeast Asia, schools were closed at an average of 136 days between 2020 and 2021. ASEAN reported that school closures affected the quality of education for more than 152 million children across its member states. Estimates of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) show that learning disruption could result in losses in lifetime earnings of at least $147 billion for the region.
A policy brief from the ASEAN Secretariat and Cambridge Partnership for Education gives nine high-level policy recommendations that address three challenges: learning loss and accelerated learning, access to education, and building resilience in education. It is the result of a roundtable discussion with ASEAN ministers of education last March.
Meanwhile, an ADB Brief provides practical actions on how to recover learning losses from COVID-19 school closures in Asia and the Pacific.
Nine steps to reverse education disruption
The nine recommendations from the ASEAN–Cambridge policy brief are:
- Address learning loss with holistic solutions that consider mental health and wellbeing to ensure effective learning;
- Prioritize addressing learning loss for younger students, vulnerable students, and people on vocational pathways;
- Review and update the national curricula to promote deeper and long-term learning and to better respond to global trends and issues (i.e., digitalization, climate change, sustainability);
- Ensure universal access to education by building on the progress made in digitalization during the pandemic;
- Improve access and the quality of education by using new data technologies to understand national trends and develop effective interventions;
- Work across government sectors to address socioeconomic and cultural barriers to education;
- Transform education for the future while addressing systemic problems, such as learning inequality and the digital divide;
- Invest in schools and in their capacity for blended learning, which is the future of education; and
- Recognize the role of school leaders and teachers as agents of change and invest in their training.
Strategies for learning recovery
The ADB Brief outlines complementary strategies that education policy makers, school administrators, and teachers can implement to recover learning losses.
Measure learning levels to inform practice and policy. The report says “a key first step after schools safely reopen is to test students to determine how much knowledge was lost or forgone and at what level to restart instruction, after which attention should focus on regularly tracking the progress of learning.”
Consolidate the curriculum. Focus on essential or foundational skills: basic literacy and numeracy.
Teach to the student’s level. The pandemic has intensified learning poverty. Educators need to address the needs of weaker students through such methods as enlisting the help of teaching assistants and tutors or using education technology to customize lessons.
Extend learning time. The report notes that “many economies have opted to adjust the academic calendar and/or increase class hours since the return to in-person classes.” It cautions however that adding classroom hours is effective only up to a certain point beyond which students lose concentration or get too tired.
Encourage re-enrollment. Public information campaigns, community monitoring and mobilization efforts, and financial incentives may be used to encourage re-enrollment of dropouts.
Train teachers for learning recovery. Quality in-service training is needed to provide teachers with the skills to help lagging students catch up. A coaching or mentorship program can provide cost-effective and on-the-job training and post-training support. The report adds that “policy makers may need to increase their investment to ensure all teachers can be adequately trained in a relatively short period of time.”
