What happens to the Education sector post COVID19?
A buzzing question alongside all the tension that COVID19 has caused over the past 2 months — what happens to both academic and non-academic education?
As a temporary solution, we are already observing the world adapting to online classes taken on Zoom, Google Hangouts, Webex, and many different platforms. However, that does not qualify as a solution a lot of organizations can fully adopt. Why? I am going to point out that as we move further with this article.
The current situation benefits one thing though, our dependency on the digital world. As we move forward towards the world running more and more on technology, this is the time to teach and nurture the upcoming generation on the basic tech tools required for the 21st century. While the world is under lockdown, it also allows families to get more involved with what their children do with their free time besides doing regular classes. Yes, I am mostly talking about students from schools (higher, and secondary to be more precise).
I was going through an article a few days ago by World Economic Forum where they featured a report mentioning that 65% of primary school children today will be engaged in professions that do not yet exist! This particular information, although not completely surprising, does give all the educational institutions an incentive to pause and comprehend the entire system and flow of what had been taught to students to date. Does that mean that the COVID19 break has rather favored the education sector? Maybe and No, both, I would say.
MAYBE COVID19 lockdown is helping
While the schools/academic institutions are unlocking technology (otherwise unheard of by most students until it’s too late in their career) to deliver education to students, this situation is also allowing reshaping the role than an educator/teacher plays in the classroom.
For an organization like Young Founders School that teaches lessons beyond academic classrooms, this situation, however, has rather been a motivation but, I am going to point out some major challenges first.
Limited reach to new students
In my previous articles — I had defined what exactly is Young Founders School (YFS) about and up to. Now for any organization that depends on partner schools to have the word spread to reach new students, it is difficult to target the new students with the schools closed. On top of that, students might already be overwhelmed with the regular online classes that they are doing with their schools. A lot of our courses were targeted towards students from underprivileged backgrounds. These students do not necessarily have access to the internet or tools to get involved with the digital world. What does this mean now? We cannot reach out with our programs, that focus heavily on 21st-century lessons, to the students who would have been the most impacted group. Not to forget, this group of students does not always have access to learning future skills.
Positive changes in the role of Educator and Education
Now coming to how COVID19 might have been the opportunity that focuses on the importance of organizations such as Young Founders School. Going back to my reference from World Economic Forum; this article states how not only most of the current jobs will disappear for generation Aplha and Z, but it also states that skills taught for the future need to be more focused on Life Skills, or more precisely prepare them for the 4th Industrial Revolution.
An additional step that Young Founders School had always been preparing to take, involved students from all over the globe to partake in one classroom (digital in this case). This straight-up points out that organizations, like those of YFS, are actively educating the youngsters in an interconnected world. The role of the educator upgrades here. Not only is the person (educator/facilitator) is in charge of delivering the lessons, the person has to ensure the students participate with each other. The purpose of the online classes also comes down to connecting different cultures, different people from different parts of the world. All of these directs that the educator needs the skills required to adapt to technology.
Areas where COVID19 lockdown is NOT helping
Coming to another reason why I think that the COVID19 move to online classes hasn’t exactly benefitted the education sector. While schools are doing their best to utilize these available tools, it is also restricting a lot of them to deliver all their subjects. We don’t want our children to not focus on their creative subjects, just how we do not want them to forget what physical sports are like.
However, online classes that we see now, cannot be a permanent solution, and here is why.
Inequality
It is likely to increase (and most probably is increasing) inequality. In a country like Bangladesh, where constant internet access is pretty much a luxury, how do we visualize/forecast/think school-goers from the rural areas will participate in online learning? I will drop the idea of the availability of digital devices and in my most optimistic sense consider that these children may have at least 1 smartphone at their homes. But really, what about internet access? One excellent measure from the government was to forecast classes on national television. But let’s not forget that we are talking about teaching the future generation, about future skills — so when you bring these children to do their classes on television, does it not restrict them from an interactive session while the ones who can afford the internet are interconnected?
While one can argue that the new and very timely launched platform “Kishor Batayon” is also another measure that the Bangladesh Government has taken (which btw, I completely agree), it still does not diminish the fact that these children are going to be deprived of a lot of opportunities to get connected with non-academic programs training them hands-on on the future skills.
So, what happens post COVID19?
The entire education sector is not opting for online classes. Well, not all of them. Some of the EdTech organizations already have, and will continue to do so to ensure a certain group of children, collectively from different parts of the world, are advancing and preparing for the 4th industrial revolution. While a completely different background of students coming from less privileged backgrounds and communities will still need trainers to be physically present and train them more about the technology, the tools alongside the skills they will need to adapt if a situation as such arises again.
As for academic schools, this might be the right time to adapt the system to the current situation and teach students more about future skills. After all, 65% of their jobs do not even exist as of now!
