COVID-19 related school disruptions: Socially responsible interventions that monitor and redress learning loss exacerbated inequities

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This current year may be unique in history in terms of the disruption of education across the entire globe. The COVID-19 pandemic forced school systems in every country to halt children’s education at some point this past year. And in many countries, education has still yet to restart in a form akin to the normal delivery of schooling.

Governments, civil society, families and international and local agencies and non-governmental organizations have mobilized to respond to this unprecedented crisis. In the rush to do something to try to fill the void in young people’s education caused by school closures several questions arise. Paramount among those are: How will students’ educational progress be impacted? Will there be significant deterioration of critical foundational skills such as literacy and numeracy? Will any impact on learning be felt inequitably? What kinds of interventions can help mitigate learning loss during periods of school closure? And what is needed to ensure those interventions enhance equity?

Of overarching concern is whether responses to the crisis in education caused by COVID-19 are socially responsible. Everyone is rushing to dedicate resources and effort to designing and implementing alternative means to assure some form of education while students are not in school. We must ask whether emerging solutions account for the intersecting contextual factors that could better tailor interventions to the needs of the intended beneficiaries. Or are solutions emerging in ways that disregard considerations of social justice? Efforts to mitigate learning loss need to be monitored and evaluated in ways that demonstrate whether they are redressing imbalances in families’ access to educational resources. Are systems for monitoring the rapidly deployed variety of alternatives to in-school learning set up to evaluate whether those alternatives are in fact exacerbating existing systemic inequities?

Likewise, as schools begin to reopen following protracted disruptions, multiple actors are working with and advising ministries of education on how to account for the ways in which student learning has been disrupted. How far will students have regressed in their learning and skill development? Learning loss is likely dependent on how proficient students were in their skills when school was interrupted, as well as determined by what resources their families had access to during the time they were out of school. How can the school day and instructional approaches be designed to account for any learning loss and for the likely inequity in the amount of loss different students will have experienced? What appropriate remedial measures are needed? What monitoring and evaluation mechanisms can tell us whether remedial responses are socially just – i.e., meeting the needs of the students who most need help?

This panel brings together four examples of programs designed to respond to the educational crisis caused by COVID-19. These four interventions will be presented in light of estimates of learning loss developed by RTI International. Using 81 datasets from the Early Grade Reading Assessment, RTI constructed a model of grade to grade progression in early primary school (i.e., grade 1 to grade 2, or grade 2 to grade 3). The model examines progress for students along the full distribution of reading proficiency levels and then estimates how interruptions to schooling impact that normal progress for all students. Factored into the estimate of learning loss is the amount of the school year that was lost (i.e., the lost opportunity for additional learning) and the length of time students are out of school (akin to extended summer learning loss). Given the potentially extreme loss of learning revealed by these estimates, the four cases examine whether radio-based lessons help mitigate learning loss in Ghana, whether a variety of distance-based interventions promoted learning and whether home-based learning supported in part by teachers is a viable alternative to regular in-class instruction in the Philippines, whether partial reopening of schools (with students in school some days, and learning at home on others) is supporting learning in Cambodia, and whether the restart of the academic year in Morocco is appropriately accounting for and addressing students’ remedial needs.

Sub Unit

• Monitoring and Evaluation SIG

Chair

• Joseph Destefano, RTI International

Individual Presentations

• Learning, Remediation and Reinforcement: Learning Loss and Catch-up Solutions in Morocco - Karen Tietjen, Creative Associates International; Abdullah Ferdous, MSI; Sean Kelly, Management Systems International; Zakaria Sbaa El Alaoui, Managements Systems International

• Learning about the pandemic slide, the role of home and learning environment, and the value of distance learning. - Olusola Alonge, FHI 360; Ania Chaluda, FHI 360; Kwabena Tandoh, Ghana Education Services

• Can a combination of in-school and at home activities remediate and advance literacy skills in young learners in Cambodia? - Olivia Byler, RTI International

• Learning Continuity in the Face of COVID-19 in the Philippines. - Mitchell H Rakusin, RTI International; Mariel Gulla, RTI International