How COVID-19 Pandemic Affects the Education Sector

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused devastating consequences including widespread school closure in more than 190 countries. This resulted to education disruption for 94% of the global student population which can greatly affect our society.

Education is a primary driver of progress. It allows a child to have better opportunities in the future, a family to improve their social stratification, and a society to have higher economic growth. Lack of access to education is a cause of poverty which leads to increase crime rates and citizens with less interest in civic involvement. This means that when the education sector collapses, peaceful and productive societies are difficult to sustained.

This is how important education to us. Therefore, it should be one of the priorities for governments to minimize the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible future damages. Schools need to reopen soon to allow students to continue their education. However, it is not that easy. Careful planning must be done as school reopening could have enormous social and economic implications.

First, governments must suppress the transmission of the Coronavirus to ensure a safe environment for everyone. The virus is easily spread through close contact with an infected person. It is important to note that some patients are asymptomatic or do not manifest symptoms making it difficult to tell who is infected. It only takes one person to infect thousands of people within a few days especially in high density places like schools. Hence, ensuring a safe environment is critical to speed up the reopening of schools.

Some countries decided to change the mode of delivering education by implementing online classes which allows students to continue their studies while remaining at home. This can be a good approach to stop further disruption in education but are seen to have negative impacts on students who lack the necessary resources. Online classes require a computer and an internet connection which are not available to some students especially those in poverty. This limits their chance to continue their studies and they may be left behind by their classmates.

Even with a computer and internet connection some students still experience negative impacts from school closure. There are 400 million children worldwide who missed their early childhood education which is important in stimulating and enriching their social, emotional, behavioral, and academic developments. In the technical and vocational education, it results difficulties in implementing apprenticeship and hands-on learning which are the key elements of the courses. Moreover, in higher education classes have been postponed due to the lack of IT infrastructure of both teachers and students.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic to the education system resulted to difficult consequences and significant changes. It affects children’s studies, parents’ financial situation including the ability to work as they have to take care of their children who stay at home instead of attending school. Society is also affected as poor education can lead to decreased in economic rate and unhealthy living environment. All of us should work together to control the spread of COVID-19 and build a resilient community to hasten the reopening of schools and reduce the problems caused by the pandemic.