COVID-19:Pakistan's Educational Challanges and the way forward

By:Ahmad Yar

Perhaps, for the first time in human history, a global pandemic has paralyzed almost all

the world.  Education community weather parents, teachers and students are badly affected by the present crises of covid-19.  Students’ learning, internal and external assessments, publishing, trainings and research activities have also borne the brunt of the COVID-19. Thousands of educational events have been cancelled; training centers and hostels have been closed, and students have been evacuated in order to contain the spread of the virus.

The current crisis has badly affected the work of more than 63 million primary and

secondary school teachers, and countless support personnel of education sector. 

World 

When the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared pandemic on March, 13, 2020, governments of different states announced closure of educational institutions in order to contain the outbreak of pandemic.

On 27th April 2020, approximately 1.723 billion learners have been affected due to

closure of school in the wake of pandemic. According to UNESCO monitoring, 191 countries have imposed nationwide closures and 5 countries have implemented local closures, which impacted almost 98.4 percent of the students’ community worldwide.  

Pakistan

According to an estimate, almost 46,803,407 students are affected in Pakistan. At

pre-primary level the affected students touched the figure of 8,636,383, whereas at the

secondary and tertiary levels, the affected students are approximately 13,357,618 and

1,878,101 respectively.

 In Pakistan, the federal government has declared closure of all educational institutes since mid-March, 2020, which will remain closed until May 2020. But the

reopening of educational institutes before September seems quite uncertain as the virulent virus cases are in the ascending trajectory.

Closer of schools in Pakistan

In Pakistan, closure of schools is a quite familiar and traditional phenomenon.

Educational institutes are closed for almost 03 months in northern areas during the

winter. Similarly, in the hotter parts of the country, 03 months summer vacations’

practice is also in vogue. This long period of disengagement, 03 months vacations, also

creates huge learning gap in the learning process of young students, but unfortunately, we

have never pondered and planned to fulfill this great gap with some sort of engagement in

this period. Therefore, this crisis provides us the opportunity to brainstorm novel and

digitalized ways of learning. In the past, closure of educational institutes happened due

to different reasons: smog, insecurity and unfavorable weather conditions. But

unfortunately, we could not learn any lessons from these crises.

We could not develop any system, laws; SOPs are infrastructure to prepare our education system for such future crises. Even When the news of Covid-19 broke out for the first time in January 2020, China took stringent steps in containing the spread of virus, which also provided the world a space of 30 days for taking precautionary and effective steps for defeating the virus. But unfortunately the government could not took the required precautionary measures in 

the recent crisis has also exposed the capacity of the government in coping with such crises. The application of ICT and distance learning in education are the

obvious examples of government’s failure. Although The National Education Policy 2017

clearly recognizes virtual education as a means to equip large number of Pakistani students with the required skills in order to compete with international standards in knowledge and economy, and thereby, they may actively play their role in national economic growth. But every government has always put education on the back burner.

Undoubtedly, this current crisis has enormously increased our dependency on virtual

education and distance learning.

Challenges  

But unfortunately due to sheer negligence of the past governments, education

sector is confronting numerous challenges: these challenges are   basic infrastructure,  internet accessibility ( presently 36 percent which is equivalent to 76 million citizens in 2019); the availability of smart phones ( 51 percent in 2020); there is also a problem of connectivity and especially high speed connectivity , network capacity  , faculty’s reluctance for online teaching, and special IT courses for teachers to prepare their lessons and deliver it online.

 There is also some other challenges including updated curriculum meeting, the demand of the 21st century.  (The present curriculum

was prepared in 2006), .

 There is a dearth of parental skills development programs. Similarly, there is also a

lack of coordination between government, organization, national and international companies,

 So, due to all these challenges, a large number of students are suffering academically in the present crisis. A small portion of students of higher education institutions and a few elite private schools, mostly situated in big cities of Pakistan, are providing online education to students.

They have adopted a variety of technology-based strategies as alternatives for the traditional classrooms. They also deliver lectures through video conferencing and online learning platforms and share different learning materials and worksheets through school-based intranets, which are the platforms of learning in order to overcome the learning gap of students up to some extents in the present crisis. But the majority of students of government schools and low income private schools are deprived of online learning and distance learning programs;

   

Learning from other countries

Pakistan is not the only country which is facing such problems, there are countries worldwide which are also facing the same problem like us regardless of limited resources, they have adopted innovative ideas, and fortunately, many ofthem are successful up to a great extent in overcoming the learning gap during the pandemic. We can learn from the innovative ideas of learning from the following countries.

In Canadian province of Ontario, 2 million students, trade unions and 15,000 teachers

were trained by the Ministry of Education in a course of two weeks to conduct classes online.

, Ukraine is one of the first countries to roll out its online curriculum.

 Similarly, due the present crisis, there are 3 million students who are out of school in Rwanda. To keep them in touch with learning, the government of Rwanda uses Radio which is one of the most accessible mediums in the country.

 The United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Education and Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University have provided an e-training course for more than 42,000 teachers

 managing online classrooms and using technology.

 Ministry of Education of Argentina has also launched a web portal edu.ar. , which provides free resources to teachers, students, administrators and families. Ministry of Education also airs programs for students on TV and Radio. Such programs are conducted by scientists, artists, journalists and scholars.

Argentina has also made accessibility to its educational portal as free of cost. The browsing of this website cost nothing.

 Austria has taken the initiative of dealing with psychological impacts of the crisis. Psychologists can be reached by telephone or e-mail from the comfort zones of

homes. These services are also available during evening hours and on weekends. These services are provided in 23 different languages; therefore, it also caters the requirements of those people who do not speak German.

 For fulfilling the e-learning needs of 60,000 teachers and 1,200,000

students, the Paraguay government signed an agreement for the students with Microsoft 

cost. 

The European Training Foundation (ETF) is also focusing on some new

enterprises of Education community (education and training systems, businesses, schools,

teachers, students and their families) which can tackle the challenges of teaching and learning at

a distance — often using unfamiliar and untried technology and imperfect systems and

infrastructure.

Pakistan can learn a lot of lessons from these countries around the world to equip itself with different strategies in order to cope up with the evolving crisis.

The way forward

  1. The government should collect all available data about different learning solutions

Around the world, and make a Workable plan for implementation.

2. Coordinated efforts should be made by involving different sections of our societies

Including organizations, online learning companies, publishers, school authorities,

Media and families to adopt an integrated approach for planning distance learning

Strategies to ensure student learning at home.

3. An online platform should be created where educational institution should share

Their success stories for reaching out to the children amid these crises. In this

Respect, the success stories from around the world should be shared with education

Community in Pakistan.

4. Government should give incentives to the telecommunication companies; to increase 

 Their access to the maximum area may be increased.

5. Group of experts from both public and private sector of each subject should come

Together and identify all those resources available online in line with national

Curriculum, which will enable a large number of  students to benefit from all these resources. The government should play the role of a facilitator in this regard.

6. Government should create a platform where public and private universities could

Share their best practices for promoting distance learning .Best practices should be

Encouraged, rewarded and made public.

7. Government has taken a good initiative by using TV for learning purposes. But to

Make it more effective, the programs should be aired on local TV and other Channels. Awareness should be created among the school authorities, associations, and families which should ensure the accessibility of these programs to the Students. Both TV channels and FM radio can be used for the purpose of learning.

8. School associations should identify all those resources, whether online or other, for

Families and teachers should work as monitors to see whether those resources are

Being used  effectively.

9. A parental awareness campaign should be started by the Ministry of Education for

Engaging students while utilizing TV channels, FM radios, SMS, What Sapp and

Other social Media networks online sessions through zoom and engaging of both

Public and private school’s teachers, as most of these teachers are free these days.

10. Government should train teachers for delivering distance and online learning

Lecture. It should also help low income private school as they economically suffered a lot during the current crisis.

11. The Government of Pakistan should launch an online portal for the availability learning

Materials of student, teachers, parents. The

Government should also give incentive to   the telecommunication company to allow free

Browsing of the web portal following the model of Argentina.

The writer is Associate Zonal Head at  AFAQ