Across the African continent, an estimated 297 million students have been affected by school closures as a result of the Covid pandemic.
Globally, school closures due to COVID-19 have affected 1.29 billion students in 186 countries, which is 73.8 per cent of the world’s student population, according to the UN Education Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In a time of global uncertainty, countries have put in motion some action plans to alleviate the education sector that has been overshadowed by the pandemic. Learning institutions in various countries have started making use of the internet, various social media platforms, radio and television to provide students with learning material during the lockdown. In Egypt, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa and others, several schools and universities have moved some of their programmes to online platforms and have encouraged students to get connected.
The University of Ghana, for example, has trained its lecturers on how to put together online classes, while negotiating with telecom companies to grant free internet data, usually capped at 5G, for the students.
Despite all these substitute learning methods being put in place, they have brought to light issues such as the rural-urban digital divide and expensive data. Online classes alone are unable to cater for all the students, and this creates the risk of leaving millions of students in Africa behind in their studies with the already existing social inequality with students from poor families losing the little chance they have to succeed in an education system that already doesn’t favour them.
Countries like Rwanda have put in place measures that try to overcome the digital divide barrier by introducing radio lessons, whereby they have a 20-minute lesson on the radio with radio scripts from around the world focusing on basic literacy and numeracy that could be adapted to align with the school curriculum after research had shown that more than 70% can access the radio rather than the internet.
Globally in some European countries as well as Asia children have been seen to be physically attending classes with measures being put in place by the school boards to try to abide by the WHO (World Health Organization) regulations, countries like Denmark and South Korea have been maintaining the health regulations of social distancing amongst students by barricade dividing of the class minimising student contact and also the creation of one-meter wings per student. However, these plans have raised the question of balance of risk as to ”what guarantee is there that such methods will prevent the virus from spreading amongst the children, and also the risks of keeping children at home and not attending school?” Already in South Korea, an increase stats in active cases of the pandemic has been recorded just after the reopening of schools, with South Africa recording high stats of children who tested positive for COVID 19 just recently after opening schools,this leaves the question WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF OPENING SCHOOLS, WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF KEEPING CHILDREN AT HOME FROM SCHOOL?
So many social risks can be aligned with children not going to school, what action can the various governing bodies globally take to ensure children still proceed with their education without depriving the other of equal opportunity, without exposing the children to the health hazard of contracting COVID19?