{"id":68697,"date":"2021-07-09T12:43:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T12:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=68697"},"modified":"2021-07-09T12:45:47","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T12:45:47","slug":"multiple-challenges-associated-with-online-education-too-many-cooks-by-raj-gonsalkorale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/multiple-challenges-associated-with-online-education-too-many-cooks-by-raj-gonsalkorale\/","title":{"rendered":"Multiple challenges associated with online education; Too many Cooks? – By Raj Gonsalkorale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Multiple challenges associated with online education; Too many Cooks? – By Raj Gonsalkorale<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

\"Multiple<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren\u2019s education is among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world. Prolonged school closure and limited access to distant learning has deprived children of their universal right to education, particularly in poorer countries<\/em>\u201d –UNICEF<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Raj Gonsalkorale<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

The COVID pandemic has accentuated a disparity that already exists between facilities that are available for poorer children in semi urban and rural areas, and those in more urban and affluent situations.<\/span><\/h4>\n

While standards of educational institutions are different to what they were some years ago, there are many schools amongst the nearly 12,000 schools in Sri Lanka which lack even basic teaching needs, and worse, even essential facilities like decent toilets, water, electricity and other amenities. Often what is taken for granted in an urban central school, is a luxury in many rural schools.<\/span><\/h4>\n

Opportunities for a quality school education was never on a level playing in the country, and in a practical sense it has been a very challenging exercise to make it so. Over the years, the disparities that exist between those who have or had opportunities for a quality education irrespective of where they lived, or their socio economic conditions, and those who did not, and still do not, have been bridged to some degree. Yet, inequity does exist.<\/span><\/h4>\n

There are many school children who do not have basic needs such as exercise books, pens, pencils and other basic requisites they require for their education, although they receive text books from the State. Poverty levels, general socio economic conditions of parents or guardians of children, orphaned children or those with one parent without an adequate income to send every child to a school, is nothing unusual not just in rural settings, but even in urban settings.<\/span><\/h4>\n

In this context, school closures due to the pandemic and many children losing out on an education for extended periods of time, unfortunately, is not a new phenomenon for some children who have faced this situation with or without a pandemic on account of other socio economic factors. The new manthra of online education for school children in Sri Lanka is and has been foreign to many children, as the COVID pandemic itself. However, now, thanks in a way to COVID itself, an opportunity has arisen to introduce a mechanism for the country which could act as the leveller of opportunity for all children irrespective of their socio economic status, and where they live, by way of online education.<\/span><\/h4>\n

It is of course easier said than done to bring a degree of universality to the concept and practice of online education to school children throughout the country. The very reasons that impacted on a universality prior to COVID, plus many other reasons makes this difficult, particularly in the short to medium term.<\/span><\/h4>\n

In Sri Lanka, and in almost all countries in the world, online education for school children was not a priority policy consideration until COVID struck the world. No doubt it may have been happening to varying degrees in different countries and in different settings dictated to by a variety of reasons, including geography and physical access to schools.<\/span><\/h4>\n

The COVID pandemic struck in this climate and children at all stages of schooling got affected irrespective of their fortunes or the lack of it. This misfortune has not been confined to Sri Lanka, and the BBC reckons that some 147 million children have got affected in South Asia.<\/span><\/h4>\n

In a report titled \u201cCoronavirus: How the lockdown has changed schooling in South Asia by Shruti Menon<\/strong> in BBC Reality Check on the 21st<\/sup> September 2020 (https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-south-asia-54009306<\/a><\/span>), Menon says \u201cmany South Asian countries lack a reliable internet infrastructure and the cost of online access can be prohibitive for poorer communities. The UN says at least 147 million children are unable to access online or remote learning. In India, only 24% of households have access to the internet, according to a 2019 government survey. In rural parts of India, the numbers are far lower with only 4% of households having access to the internet. Bangladesh has better overall connectivity than India. It’s estimated that 60% can get online, although the quality of broadband internet is often very poor. Nepal’s latest Economic Survey report says that of the nearly 30,000 government schools, fewer than 30% have access to a computer, and only 12% can offer online learning.<\/span><\/h4>\n

Save the Children contends that children have lost more than a third of their school year to the pandemic and they have also said there are huge discrepancies in access to learning in wealthier nations as well during the pandemic- reliefweb.int\/report\/world\/children-have-lost-more-third-their-school-year-pandemic-save-children<\/span><\/h4>\n

Save the Children says that \u201cstudents in the U.S. for example are more disconnected from the internet than students in other high-income countries, which likely also impacted their access to remote learning. Only two EU countries have lower levels of internet access than the U.S. \u2013 Bulgaria and Romania.\u00a0At the start of the pandemic, upwards of 15 million students from kindergarten through to high school in U.S. public schools lacked adequate internet for distance learning at home. Other wealthier countries also struggled to provide equal online alternatives for school-based learning. In Norway, while almost all youth between 9 and 18 years old has access to a smartphone,\u00a030 percent did not have access to a PC<\/a><\/span>\u00a0at home. In the Netherlands, one in five children do not have a PC or tablet for home learning\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

New analysis by Save the Children of data for 194 countries and different regions shows that children in Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia, missed out on almost triple the education of children in Western Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Broken down at regional level, the difference in lost days of education becomes painfully clear, Save the Children said:<\/span><\/p>\n