A lost year – Covid’s impact on school going children

41% of our population is below 20 years of age. This makes up for a sizeable chunk of the school-going population in need of education and skills for a robust workforce in the future. Nearly 1.5 millions schools were shut in India for 315 days, a significant part of 2020 and early 2021, due to the pandemic impacting about 250 million children. With the second wave now gripping the country, most schools are closed once again, with year-end exams cancelled or postponed. The pandemic has exacerbated concerns of equity and equality in several aspects of life, access to education being a significant one.

Across 190 countries, 1.7 billion students were affected by the closure of educational establishments. While the advanced nations had the means and the method to offer remote learning to their students, the low-income countries faced several challenges in offering the same. According to UNESCO, high-income countries’ digital education offerings covered 80% of the population, and in low-income countries only 50% of the student population received digital education. Erratic electricity supply and limited digital literacy coupled with the lack of devices were major impediments in access to digital education in most developing and under-developed countries.

Thus, a significant third of the world population was unable to access remote learning. In India, too, unstable internet connection and low broadband penetration in semi-urban and rural areas impacted digital learning opportunities. The adoption of digital technology was smoother among private schools in India, but government schools and the bulk of lower end schools were not able to take that digital leap seamlessly. In Brazil, for instance, 95% of the children from privileged families had computers at home, while only 14% of the students from low-income families had computers at home. In the USA, 100% of students from affluent families had computers at home, while only 25% from poor families did.

With the long gap in learning, coupled with differential access, unreliable assessment standards and inadequate checks and balance, the students are inevitably facing major learning gaps. In the UK , there was evidence of an increased ‘word gap’ among students at the transition from primary to secondary school. The Ofsted November 2020 report on the situation before the second UK lockdown highlighted that the primary school children have experienced losses across a range of subjects or were at the same level as March 2020.  Vast deficits were also evident in social and communication skill, listening skills, speech, phonics and motor skills. Some students could not even hold a pencil!

A study by Azim Premji Foundation highlighted that 82% of children across 5 Indian States have lost at least one specific mathematical ability, such as identifying numbers, performing operations or problem solving, when compared to last year. Similarly, 92% of children, on an average, have lost at least one specific language ability such as oral expression, reading fluency, writing skill and reading comprehension, compared to the previous year . This is seen uniformly across all classes.

Read more: A lost year – COVID impacted school going children severly (siasat.com)