Coping with COVID - VET, equality and teachers
There has never been such a suspension of education and training since formal schooling was established in the 19th century. My colleague Alex Brolpito wrote a blog recently, making the point that even the Spanish flu, which touched almost every territory with human habitation from 1918-20, was far more lethal globally than COVID, but did not disrupt learning and schooling to the same extent. UNESCO estimates that 1.5 billion learners are affected.
COVID is of course the blog topic of the moment, so I offer just a few reflections, some on ETF’s particular concerns, others broader. I draw especially on a recent ETF report and my participation in a UNESCO webinar last week.
VET is harder hit than general or higher education
ETF’s concern is lifelong learning, with an orientation towards VET. VET faces specific challenges in the current conditions as practical work, especially in technical subjects, and work placements, are either unfeasible or more difficult to pursue. Tunisia has suspended VET altogether.
Governments and schools are responding to learner needs with provision of laptops, TV, radio etc, access to free online sources and other tools and services.
But because VET systems and programmes are linked to local or national skills needs and so have distinct local characteristics, they have been finding adaptation to the international solutions and tools now circulating takes more time than might be the case in more general education. Governments are beginning to move to support VET, but some providers feel left to fend for themselves more than their general education counterparts, who can count on more central government direction and support.
It’s not social distancing we need but closing the gap
Perhaps, though, the most disturbing consequence of the current crisis, even if it is no surprise, is that negative impacts fall disproportionately and predominantly on those already least equipped – or supported – to address it. That applies to special needs learners and less well-off families.
So, while this experience is unprecedented for all of us around the world, its impacts are all too familiar. “Coping with Covid” is the title of the ongoing series of ETF reports. Some people are, and some are not, well-positioned, to cope. It won’t help that other activities that help young people grow up such as sport or music have in practice often disappeared. This narrowing of learner experience is another detrimental consequence.
Teachers – holding the line
Schools and governments are already looking at how they can use the tools and practices they have adopted for this emergency after the crisis is over. Inevitably, such plans are dominated by how to use digital technology. This crisis, which has evoked such technologically driven responses, has also brought home that it is teachers who add the value to machines or systems.
It is a commonplace of history that technology always exceeds our capacity to master it, but I wonder if that has been the case here. Teachers, it seems to me, have proven the reassuring figures of this crisis. Machines make the need for the quality of human intervention to be all the greater.
Our common crisis underlines hat teachers are irreplaceable. But you all knew that anyway.
Links
ETF report : https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2020-04/mapping_covid_150…
UNESCO webinars: https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/webinars