Education Pandemic
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Yamini Aiyar
- Published: March 1, 2022
Overview
- First-person account: author’s children last entered school gates on March 10, 2020, weeks before India’s national lockdown was announced; two years on, schools in much of the country remain closed.
- Schools often reopened partially in 2021—limiting attendance to higher grades and only half the student body on a given day—and were typically the first institutions to close when COVID-19 cases surged.
- The physical classroom has been largely replaced by remote learning (the "Zoom room"), with visible emotional, developmental, and learning costs.
Digital divide
- A September 2021 survey of 1,400 schoolchildren from disadvantaged homes across 15 states found that just 8 percent of children in rural areas and 24 percent in urban areas had access to regular online education.
- School closures affected 1.6 billion children globally.
- In parts of South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, schools have been fully closed for over 80 weeks; Uganda reopened schools in January 2022 after 82 weeks of partial or full closure.
- A 2021 ADB study (using International Telecommunication Union data) estimates that only 41 percent of households in Asia’s lower-middle income economies have internet access.
- In West and Central Africa, broadcast media substituted for classrooms, but only 26 percent of households in rural areas owned a television.
- In India, remote learning mostly uses mobile phones; a 2021 ASER survey shows that only 68 percent of households with primary-school-age children in rural India owned smartphones, and of those, only a quarter of students had access to these phones—leaving many with nearly two years of no schooling.
Educational value and learning losses
- ASER findings (selected rural areas):
- In Chhattisgarh, after schools reopened in August 2021, the ability of Standards 3 and 5 students to read a basic Standard 2 textbook declined by over 15 percentage points.
- In rural Karnataka, the share of Standard 3 students at grade level fell from 19.2 percent in 2018 to 9.8 percent in 2020.
- Basic arithmetic: 17.3 percent of students could do simple subtraction in 2020, compared with 26.3 percent in 2018.
- ADB estimate (April 2021): students in South Asia lost about 0.55 learning-adjusted years of schooling; Pacific region students lost 0.08 learning-adjusted years.
- Long-term productivity costs:
- Study of Pakistani students affected by 14 weeks of lost schooling after the 2005 earthquake estimates lifetime earnings losses of 15 percent for those children.
- ADB projects losses to future productivity and lifetime earnings for affected students could be $1.25 trillion for developing Asia, equivalent to 5.4 percent of the region’s 2020 GDP.
Learning investment and policy recommendations
- Reopening schools presents an opportunity to bridge two years of learning losses but will require significant financial resources for:
- Physical classrooms
- Teaching materials
- Teachers and remedial instruction
- Pedagogical change recommended:
- Shift focus from syllabus completion and curriculum standards to foundational literacy and numeracy and actual learning outcomes.
- Measure learning losses and provide remedial teaching before students progress to the next grade.
- Fiscal context and urgency:
- Spending demands are rising at a time when countries plan to scale down pandemic-induced expenditure and reimpose fiscal discipline.
- India announced its annual budget for 2022–23 on February 1 and intends to cut public expenditure by 2.5 percent of GDP from 2020–21 in the new fiscal year.
- Education budgets, slashed at the peak of the pandemic, have not been increased; the author argues this reluctance to spend on education is shortsighted given long-term costs.
Key statistics (exact figures from the text)
- March 10, 2020 (date children last entered school gates)
- Survey sample: 1,400 schoolchildren across 15 states
- Online education access: 8 percent (rural), 24 percent (urban)
- Global affected children: 1.6 billion
- Regions with closures: over 80 weeks in parts of South Asia, Latin America, and Africa
- Uganda: 82 weeks of partial or full closure
- Internet access in Asia’s lower-middle income economies: 41 percent
- Television ownership in rural West and Central Africa: 26 percent
- Smartphone ownership in rural India households with primary-school-age children: 68 percent; of those, one quarter of students had access
- Chhattisgarh: decline in reading ability of Standards 3 and 5 by over 15 percentage points
- Rural Karnataka Standard 3 at grade level: 19.2 percent (2018) to 9.8 percent (2020)
- Simple subtraction ability: 26.3 percent (2018) to 17.3 percent (2020)
- Learning-adjusted years lost (ADB, April 2021): 0.55 (South Asia), 0.08 (Pacific)
- Lifetime earnings loss estimated from Pakistan earthquake study: 15 percent
- Projected losses to future productivity and lifetime earnings (ADB): $1.25 trillion; equivalent to 5.4 percent of developing Asia’s 2020 GDP
- India budget measure: cut public expenditure by 2.5 percent of GDP from 2020–21 (announced February 1, 2022)
Source: Education Pandemic, Yamini Aiyar, F&D Magazine, March 2022.
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