With few exceptions, the world’s school systems – both public and private – were unprepared for the conditions created by COVID-19.
This is a rapid look at what I have seen happening.
First Take
The lockdown approach adopted by most countries, designed to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to relieve pressure on medical services, led to an almost overnight closure of conventional schools across most of the world.
There was little or no prior work undertaken to identify the risk, consider mitigation and produce contingency plans.
Schools and school systems have responded quickly to establish new interim arrangements, and some have made exceptional efforts to provide quality solutions, but there is enormous variation in quality and in understanding of distance learning practices.
In a few rural areas and among some home-schooling groups, advanced systems for distance learning had earlier been developed, trialled and implemented effectively.
Despite these pioneering efforts, the expert distance learning community has largely been marginalized by school systems.
Schools and school systems have mostly been responding to lockdown with home-grown arrangements.
The expertise of the distance learning pioneers has not been adequately recognized nor put to work widely.
It appears that most schools and school systems are hoping for a return to normal in the short or medium term.
The large majority of schools have not invested in new tools and platforms.
At this point, only a small minority of schools and school systems are making plans that might give them a sustainable, long-term solution if the lockdown continues or is re-invoked for a lengthy period.
The situation remains one where Hope is more prevalent than a Plan.
Take 2
In schools, since the crisis started, many teachers, staff and leaders have worked very hard indeed.
Schools have either:
(a) adopted an asynchonous approach where work is assigned to students to tackle when ready,
(b) implemented a synchronous approach where teachers continue to run lessons by video conference, which all students in a class can join, or
(c) mixed the two approaches.
The synchronous is currently working better than the asynchronous, in the schools that are new to this. It is providing a good level of teacher-student interpersonal contact, which most students find reassuring.
But synchronous teaching at a distance has to cope with lower levels of immediate feedback than is usual in a conventional class, and one consequence is that it takes teachers time to settle to the right pace.
It is also challenging to get differentiation right, especially towards any outliers.
All of these factors have consequences for cognition. Learning will be less effective.
There are still the well-developed, largely synchronous systems, with years of development behind them into curated content and learning platforms, that are working better.
For children under age 8, it is harder to establish a strong distance learning approach – and the world is seeing under-5 education under severe pressure.
Take 3
Common mistakes being seen. This list is not intended to downplay the superhuman efforts being made by many who are new to distance learning – with great effect – but there are so many schools making mistakes that we have to face up to the early ‘patchiness’. We have all seen cases of:
- trivial work being set
- schools giving lessons and powerpoints to un-prepared parents to teach at home
- too many worksheets, too many online learning games
- sometimes too much art and craft, too little on the core subjects
- sometimes the opposite – too much content and student overload/anxiety
- losing the personal contact, de-personalizing all the transactions
- losing feedback – an essential core of learning
- leaders and their teachers lose contact too
- teachers left to work alone and find answers
- too little effort to understand best practices
- occasional complacency where people think it is enough to do a little
- leaders losing their visibility in their school community (i.e. to students and parents)
BBD Education recommends that school leaders be available and visible in a listening mode every day.
Take 4
The first surveys digging deeper into distance learning practice under COVID-19 are starting to emerge. Well done, Mansoor at Colliers, for example.
Findings in the UAE include:
- Parents find the move to distance learning much, much harder than teachers
- About 70% of schools have so far used existing tools for distance learning provision – only 30% of schools have made significant financial investments (over $100k) on new platforms and tools
- Approx 40% of private schools have made ‘Term 3’ discounts
- Approx 40% have provided other support measures: income-related support or installment and delayed payments
- Approx 20% have made no adjustments
- More than half of private schools have refunded all or part of their ‘Term 3’ pre-payments (e.g. for transport and extra-curricular)
- Most private school operators are optimistic about K-12 recovery in AY 2020/21
- The affordable private sector schools expect to retain numbers with a shift from premium-priced schools to their level – they do not expect discounts to continue
- The premium-priced schools are planning to extend their discounts in order to hold market share
- Delivery Tools used: Microsoft meetings, Class Dojo, Seesaw and others
Invitation
What are you seeing?
Is it enough to go into the autumn with Hope and not a better Plan? I am an optimist but I am not convinced this is going away any time soon.
