In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest crisis which affects the world. It’s not only in terms of public health and economics but also affects every sector and every society, especially, the education sector. When COVID-19 has come to change the education system. The institutions are necessary to adjust the way of teaching so that children can access the knowledge during the school closure due to the measures of each country.
The education crisis has become more severe from the impact of COVID-19 especially, the vulnerable children which existed before the pandemic. They’re facing more risk, discouragement, and loss of learning. So vulnerable and disabled children are the first group likely to drop out of the education system because some countries do not have enough facilities for these children.
Prashanti Pradhan, Co-founder and chairperson, Phensem Parent Support Group, and her child are also disabled children. She talked about education for disabled children in Bhutan. At the International Conference on Equitable Education: Together Towards Equity, Bangkok, Thailand.
She said that in Bhutan, the parents whose children are disabled have to face many challenges to put their child in the education system whether before or after COVID-19 and Bhutan is a country that has many challenges and is difficult in terms of geography.
Prashanti Pradhan, Co-founder, and chairperson, Phensem Parent Support Group
“While we have children as normal children, it is difficult when we go anywhere or do anything. And we try thinking of the parents whose children are disabilities. They can’t take their child to apply to a school that is convenient for them, travel has been restricted, and lost income because of Bhutan’s context, if you have a disabled child the parent will have to quit their job to take care of the child.” Prashanti said
Meanwhile, Mongolia has set its goals to develop Mongolia’s quality of life and education systems to respond to the children’s needs in 2030. In addition, it also aims to assess which children are vulnerable and likely to drop out of school.
Gereltuya Barimaid, Officer, Ministry of Education and Science Mongolia said that the minister of education and science has policies on inclusive learning for children with special needs, migrant workers, minorities, and discriminated persons as well as poverty.
During the pandemic of COVID-19, the Ministry of Education and Science in Mongolia has reformed the strategy of learning. They use the ‘5/9 strategies’ to adjust learning in the class to protect students away from COVID-19 and the infection rate in school is low.
Gereltuya Barimaid, Officer, Ministry of Education and Science Mongolia
Gereltuya said that the classroom was divided into 2 groups and took turns studying one by one. The students will attend 5 days in the classroom followed by another 9 days outside the classroom, including online classes, so the infection in schools is relatively low.
The refugee children group is another group that is at risk of dropping out or not being able to access the education system because of language and ethnic barriers, which may cause incomprehension about what they learned. While the conflict between Russia and Ukraine forced many families and children from Ukraine to take refuge with more than 1.4 million people in Poland and expected that the real number of refugees would be 2 million more than expected which may affect the children’s access to education.
Mr. Francesco Calcagno, Chief of Education, UNICEF Poland said that the refugees from Ukraine’s barriers are language. Most of them can’t speak Polish and hence, the refugee children are likely to drop out of the education system Poland lacks teachers who can teach Polish to Ukrainians because few teachers also can’t speak Ukrainian.
In addition, Poland also lacks the resources such as supplies, textbooks, and ICT equipment including the staff who take care of the refugee children. By the way, Poland has provided many learning opportunities for refugee children whether offline or online learning that supports over 20 learning and developing areas for young children aged 0-6 years to achieve learning and encourage development that is suitable for these children.
Marianna Dimitriou, Chief of the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Municipality of Heraklion (Crete) shared her case study in Greece Heraklion is a famous city in Greece and a prominent education system. In 2019 UNICEF commended it as one of the top ten cities in the world with a prominent education system. Then, the local office has been trying to form a partnership to fill the gaps in education and to ensure equal learning.
Maria Mercedes E. Arzadon, Associate Professor, College of Education, University of the Philippines said about the Migration, Language, and Ethnicity topic that the Philippines has a population of over 110 million people and there are many languages in the country. In 1900, the education system of the Philippines used only the English language to study, but they changed to using Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in 1973 to help develop learning in children.
Maria Mercedes E. Arzadon, Associate Professor, College of Education,
University of the Philippines
Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education or MTB-MLE effectively uses more than two languages for literacy and instruction. It starts with where the learners are and what they know. In the beginning, they will teach students in their mother tongue to make the children develop in learning another language more easily and the students also more understanding about academics.
Besides, the MTB-MLE also has an assessment system, there is a local center to help in each community and also make a network between the community, university, government, and NGO to support the MTB-MLE. They train teachers and empower teachers to develop teaching skills. Most importantly, they have to explore each local to know what language they use and design the curriculum that is suitable for them. Currently, there are over 46 local languages used in the Philippine education system.
Besides, Bangladesh, Brazil, and Vietnam also ask for every sector to work together and indicate that governments don’t reduce the importance of education even if the countries face a big crisis and listen to the student’s voices to find a solution.
Rasheda K. Choudhury, Executive Director (CEO), of Campaign For Popular Education (CAMPE) who work to make a good quality of education for the people of Bangladesh for more than 20 years, offers strategies to overcome education barriers for the poverty society as follows:
- A national and international consensus by all stakeholders on reducing inequality in education at any cost.
- Strong political commitment combined with adequate financing of education focusing on disadvantaged groups.
- Engagement of teachers, parents, local communities, and NGOs, to monitor from planning to implementation of any plan to address the education gap.
- Need for generating scientific and credible data from multiple sources (like government and international agencies, national research groups/ think tanks, etc.) and its use in planning, implementation, and monitoring of programs targeted to reach disadvantaged groups.
- Increasing ODA for education and ensuring tax justice at the national level for the financing of education.
Dr. Le Anh Vinh, Director General, The Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences talked about equitable education for the poverty society in Vietnam and the situation of education’s Vietnam over the past 10 years, the number of students in primary and lower secondary levels has increased. But the number of students in the upper secondary level has decreased slightly.
Rasheda K. Choudhury, Executive Director (CEO), of Campaign For Popular Education (CAMPE) and Italo Dutra, Regional Education Advisor, UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office (LACRO)
Italo Dutra, Regional Education Advisor, UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office (LACRO) talked about how to access the disadvantaged kids and Brazil’s education system that these children are in a crisis whether the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change. So, we should be acting in emergency mode and we should be reaching out to every child through the RAPID process.
The RAPID process is as follows:
- R – Reach every child and retain them in school.
- A – Assess learning levels.
- P – Prioritize teaching the fundamentals.
- I – Increase catch-up learning and progress beyond what we lost.
- D – Develop psychosocial health and well-being so every child is ready to learn.
Source
International Conference on Equitable Education: Together Towards Equity 2022
Session 4: Recovery Programme for The Disadvantaged Groups – Bridging The Gaps in Education
