Education and Resilience: Building Back Stronger Systems Post-crisis

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Crises - conflict, situations of violence, forced displacement, disasters, public health emergencies etc.- cause disruption to education delivery, leading to learning loss and causing long-term impacts on learning outcomes and the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. Crises also reveal pre-existing inequalities, compounding vulnerabilities in the education ecosystem.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that no country and no education system is immune to crisis with 90 percent of the world’s student population affected by school closures at the height of the pandemic in 2020 (UNICEF, 2020). Meanwhile, existing and emerging crises continue to fracture and stress education systems. It is within this context that we consider “resilience.” As calls echo to “build back better,” the international community is presented with an opportunity to rebuild and reimagine more resilient education systems that can better endure and overcome future shocks and stressors.

This panel considers resilience from a systems perspective. It recognizes that too often we talk about grit and agency of an individual, without recognizing the structures that have made these individuals and learners vulnerable in the first place (Shah, 2015). Shah writes that “resilience is not about returning to a statis but evolving as the context around us continues to change.” This panel examines several ways to understand education system strengthening through a resilience-building approach. We ask, what capacities help education systems to be more resilient in the face of crises, especially to mitigate backsliding on education outcomes; how can we better embed resilient policies and practices, from data collection to knowledge system strengthening; and how can we strengthen the evidence base on resilience while taking a resilience-building research approach?

The panelists are professionals working towards resilience to build stronger education systems: Education.org is building an independent, global resource for evidence-informed decision-making and implementation in education; USAID is a donor agency embracing resilience in its policy; the Ministry of Education in Guyana is putting resilience into policy and practice; and FHI 360 is integrating resilience perspectives into their research.

This panel is convened by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) and USAID's Leading through Learning Global Platform (Leading through Learning), which is a USAID global learning system made up of the Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN), the Global Reading Network (GRN), and the Higher Education Learning Network (HELN).

Sub Unit

• Education, Conflict, and Emergencies SIG

Chair

• Sonja H Anderson, INEE

Individual Presentations

• Resilience and the education knowledge infrastructure - Suzanne Grant Lewis, Education.org

• Policy Shift to Resilience - USAID White Paper on Resilience in Education - Nina Weisenhorn, USAID

• How does participation in a non-formal accelerated education program shape adolescents’ trajectories and outcomes in Northeast Nigeria? - Wael S Moussa, FHI 360

Discussant

• Suzanne Grant Lewis, Education.org