Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on global education systems

Covid-19 pandemic made a huge bearing on education systems across the globe. Worldwide schools, colleges, and universities have been closed to prevent the transmission of the virus since avoiding community gathering and the maintenance of social-distance is crucial to prevent the spread of the disease.

This intervention was necessary to implement stay home approach at all level. However, educational institutions and students are facing different type of challenges because of this long term closure. There are of course various temporal coping mechanisms have been introduced to the education system address unforeseen impact being made by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Educational institutions closures in different countries

Due to the Covid-19 situation, the educational institutions (EI) have been started to close from March 2020. At the beginning of the pandemic, countries where Covid-19 has spread planned that educational institutions will remain closed till the end of March 2020, but now the time has been extended for almost all countries. In USA some institutions announced that they closed for the academic year and some other institutions announced that they will remain close till further notice. Australia is re-opening the schools although a large number of schools had not been closed here ("Coronavirus Covid-19 update, 2020").

On April 26, 2020, In Canada, the Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced that all schools will remain closed until at least May 31, 2020 ("School Closures Extended to Keep Students, Staff and Families Safe"). In Japan the state of emergency will remain until May 6, 2020, so educational institutions will also remain closed till then ("Coronavirus: Japan Declares Nationwide State of Emergency") On April 27, 2020, the BBC News published that China's EI started to re-opening. And Wuhan from where the pandemic had been originated will re-open schools from 6 May 2020 ("Coronavirus: Schools Start Reopening in China's Biggest Cities"). The duration of EI closures is depending on the Covid-19 situation of the countries. 

Use of online platform

There is no more face to face class because the EI have been closed at this pandemic. The usual face to face class has been replaced by online classes so that students can continue their studies. In many countries, the EI are taking the class through TV channels, Google Classroom, and many other platforms. The lessons/lectures have been prepared by the teachers/professors of the respected schools/colleges/universities, but it is not the same for all EI. Bangladesh Television (BTV) is broadcasting lessons for primary and high school students. In England, the Department of Education is offering free online courses for primary and secondary school students. They are also providing laptops to students who can't afford it. Also, they are offering 4G routers to the students to be connected to the internet. The BBC planned to launch educational resources online and on TV ("Coronavirus Lockdown: Laptops Offered for Online School Lessons at Home") According to BBC, Zoom is being used highly to work from home in current situation ("Zoom Is in Everyone's Living Room - How Safe Is It") It is a communication software that is being used largely not only for meetings and conferences but also for the online class in this pandemic Covid-19. However, in many settings online education is still out of reality for various challenges in relation to resources insufficiency and lack of readiness. 

Changes in assessment method

With social distancing, arose new changes and challenges in the assessment methods in education system. Two popular methods to assess students in a classroom are individual readiness assurance test (iRAT) and team readiness assurance test (tRAT), where students are assigned with necessary materials, granted time to work on them individually or in groups, provided with instant tests or quizzes right after the group or individual work, and finally provided with instant feedback by the teachers.

These methods have now been digitalized by the use of a number of online platforms including Zoom, Moodle, Google classroom, WhatsApp and so on (Gaber, Shehata, & Amin, 2020; The World Bank, 2020). For example, Helwan university in Egypt have been using the 'breakout room' feature in Zoom to keep on practicing the assessments smoothly (Gaber, Shehata, & Amin, 2020). With this feature students were split into teams, assigned with leaders in each group and given time to work on their iRAT and tRAT. As zoom can accommodate a very limited number of students in a single meeting at a time, WhatsApp was used instead for holding the segregate single group meetings prior to the feedback session with their course instructors. Before the feedback session began, teams logged into the break-out rooms and posted their answers on the zoom chat. Most of the participants in Helwan University and several other universities in Egypt have found the technique fruitful.

Similar assessment techniques have been applied in many other educational institutions across the world with similar feedback from the participants. However, there is limitation where practical exposure is required. For example in medical education which requires field practice. Besides, to ensure fruitful assessment outcomes, monitoring has also become a concern for the educational institutions.

Internet for education: Accessibility and quality/uniformity of internet during Covid-19

Education system is now disabled without internet connection. In the context of the current pandemic, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, rightly says that digitalization is no more an option, but an obligation. Hence, for running the education system amidst this extraordinary situation, internet access knows no bounds. Now the question arises on the accessibility of the internet in every single community, by every single individual on earth.

According to the World Bank, 2019 statistics on worldwide accessibility to internet, approximately only 50 percent had the privilege to access the internet in 2017 globally, with South Asia 30 percent, Sub-Saharan Africa 25 percent, Middle East and North Africa 65 percent in 2018, North America 88 percent, Latin America and Caribbean 66 percent in 2018 and Europe and central Asia 80 percent in 2018. The next question remains,  is the internet strong and fast enough in every corner of this '50 percent world' to run a smooth education with minimal disruption? According to Cable, a British data analysis firm, the top 5 countries with the speediest  internet on average in 2019 are: Taiwan with 85.02 mbps, Singapore with 70.86 mbps, Jersey with 67.46 mbps, Sweden with 55.18 mbps and Denmark with 49.19 mbps, whereas the rest of the world mostly have only 0-30mbps internet speed on average. Thus poor internet connection and speed have posed additional challenges to the global digitalization of education during this pandemic. 

Affordability: A Challenge to Meet Digitalized Education Globally during Covid-19. Another important issue is affordability capability to afford internet packages and essential devices to access internet as that of laptops, Wi-Fi routers, tablets etc. The statistics from World Bank (2019) shows that the internet accessibility in high income countries was 85 percent, middle income countries was 46 percent and low income countries was only 16 percent in 2017. This internet accessibility statistics pinpoints towards the affordability factor of a country. A4AI (Alliance for Affordability of Internet) (2019) has explained three layers of internet— the 'first mile' which is when internet enters a country, the 'middle mile' which is when internet passes throughout the country and the 'end mile' which is when the internet reaches the end user. A4AI (Alliance for Affordability of Internet) (2019) in their 2019 Affordability Report have pointed out the high cost of internet behind the exclusion of 50 percent of the world from availing internet. Even with the internet available throughout the country, billions of families that do not have the capacity to afford internet  connection and technological devices, their children remain deprived of the digital education system.

Postponement or cancellation of exams, internship and exchange program

Following the closure of the educational institutions, in order to maintain fairness and feasibility of assessment, respective government bodies of countries throughout the world have announced postponement or cancellation of exams. Many institutions have also postponed or cancelled internship and exchange programs in accordance with the measures announced by their respective governments.  According to a recent report by UNESCO (2020) out of 84 surveyed countries 58 countries have postponed or rescheduled exams, 11 countries have cancelled exams, 23 countries have introduced alternative approaches to the exams and 22 of them have maintained exams. For the exams cancelled, as alternate assessment approaches have been considered, hence this is somehow managed. But the problem remains with the internship and exchange programs being cancelled. This is a concern for the students, as such programs play a vital role in a student's job and career in future.

International and residential students

International and residential students who are studying in universities are facing problems due to lockdown. International students are facing difficulties to go home country due to the unavailability of flights. Some international students need to go home although didn't have the plan to go home. Now, they are having financial problems with travel costs. National but residential students also having problem to travel home because different cities have been locked down. Students who are going home have to stay in quarantine for fourteen days. But, they are being quarantined in some places where the internet is very weak. Consequently, joining online classes is not easy for them in those quarantine days. Altogether this situation is effecting the mental health of the students. 

Job and earnings of teachers a students

Covid-19 related closure of educational institutes negatively wedged income generation of the privately run schools, colleges and universities. As a result many institutions faced challenges in paying salary of their teaching and other staff. Many students who depended on earning from private tuition or par-time job also lost their income sources. Some developed countries offered supplementary financial package to support those who lost their income because of COVID-19, but of course students and faculty members from large number of countries are not getting such support thus undergoing sufferings.  

Stress and Anxiety among students

Students in different countries were in different phases of their academic calendar by the time COVID-19 hit globally.  Some students were at the middle of their academic years, some were waiting their final results, some were preparing for admission to the next level of education. Student at all level and age experienced stress and anxiety especially before and during the examinations. The examinations were postponed due to the lockdown effect and the actual date of exam is awaited. In this context many students were undergoing mental stress and there is a strong need to consider their mental health status. Though many of the educational institutes have launched online classes, adaptation of the student to the sudden transition from routine teaching method is stressful. For example, students at Asian University of Bangladesh (AUW) needed to adapt with online classes and assessment systems, which was challenging and stressful to go through. Further, for many students awaiting their entrance to the next level of education got stuck or delayed because of the closure thus create quiet uncertainty about their future.

How much ei closures help in preventing Covid-19

EI have been closed to keep students and their family safe. There are confusions regarding the effectiveness of EI closures to prevent the spread of Covid-19. If we look at the previous pandemics, we can see the school closures contributed during the outbreak of Influenza but didn't contribute during SARS. There is a question that how much EI closures help in preventing Covid-19. Very recent modeling  studies on Covid-19 predict that school/university closure may help to reduce 2 percent-4 percent deaths ("Coronavirus: Scientists Question School Closures Impact"). 

The educational institutions are now facing practical and logistical challenges due to the global lockdown to battle Covid-19. Through the use of internet, social platforms and alternative assessment methods, the world is trying to cope up with these challenges, and to great extent, many are even successfully achieving fruitful result, specifically the developed parts of the world. This is more of a challenge for the underdeveloped and developing parts, as not everyone has the capacity to access or afford internet. Students in those countries are hence at a risk of lagging behind. Moreover, the ability of the user to cope with the digital education system is also a concern. Although internet is a vast source of information, and searching and accessing information via internet is faster than the traditional method, which brings about advantage to education system, but then the world is yet not ready to deal with this sudden and complete shift to digitalization of education system, as half of the world still doesn't have access to internet. The total situations also creates anxiety and stress among the students which may ultimately have an effect on their academic performance. However, the good aspect is that the students are out of risk of Covid19, and at the same time education also did not stop. 

Dr Nazmul Alam, Associate Professor of Public Health, Asian University for Women

Dilruba Khanam Ruba, Student, Bachelor of Public Health, Asian University for Women

Shefta Rowshan, Student, Bachelor of Public Health, Asian University for Women