The Challenge: Responding to a Learning Crisis Exacerbated by COVID-19
The closure of schools due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has created unprecedented pressure on education, with short and long terms costs that include poorer learning outcomes, lower human capital accumulation, increased inequality, and greater instability. The world was already living in a learning crisis. If governments do not respond well, the learning crisis will deepen, and the country’s human capital will be depleted. More children and young people will not even go to school, and the opportunity gaps between rich and poor will be even larger. The negative impacts are potentially higher among the poor, leading to increased inequality and greater instability (crime and violence could increase; more unemployed, out-of-school youth).
Our Strategic Vision: Re-imagining Education to blur the lines between school and home
The world must respond quickly and deliberately to mitigate impacts while seizing opportunities to make education more inclusive, effective and resilient than pre-COVID-19. This will require adopting two main strategies: i) countries should support reforms of teaching, curricula and assessment of learning to enable resilience and accelerated learning anytime, anywhere; and ii) develop mechanisms to support children and parents at home for continuous learning. The successful implementation of these strategies will require the world to re-imagine education. The paradigm of school as a fixed place where children must go at a fixed time should be extended so that the school can also go to the child anywhere, anytime –a school without walls. Learning outside school and at home should be the norm rather than the exception.
The significant investments in education generation and other methods of remote information that countries have made in recent months to continue informing themselves can serve as a launching pad for the new post-COVID-19 world. The classes we are informed in today can reimagine education.
Continuous and accelerated learning in reaction to COVID-19
The Continuous and Accelerated Learning (CLL) program aims to assist multimodal lifelong learning by supporting the development, diffusion, and large-scale delivery of new and existing global public goods and regional approaches to learning continuity, in the short term to offset the effects of school. . closures, and in the medium and long term to ensure continuity and boost learning after schools reopen, while strengthening the resilience of the school system. Support will focus on improving foundational learning and reducing student poverty by adapting to students’ wishes. teachers and parents, and at any time, in a way that is more inclusive, equitable, effective, and resilient than before COVID-19.
The CAL program focuses on key areas:
Prepare and disseminate an education (EdTech) toolkit that provides policymakers and researchers with practical advice in the planning and design of multi-faceted remote/hybrid learning strategies in low-resource environments.
Associations
The World Bank is collaborating with many actors around the world, such as UNICEF and UNESCO, for close coordination, monitoring countries’ response to the pandemic, and co-expanding distance learning strategies, as well as with others such as the OECD and Harvard to document National Reports on an ongoing basis. To learn. To scale up and control global public goods, the World Bank relies on its own budget and grants. The main grant to be obtained comes from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) awarded to a consortium composed of the World Bank, UNICEF and UNESCO. The Bank’s share of the GPE’s investment budget focuses on the five key areas of this table on learning continuity and acceleration. Other investment resources for this chart are the REACH Trust Fund and the Early Learning Partnership (ELP) Trust Fund, which cover the pricing component of the Read at Home program.
KEY AREAS OF WORK
EdTech Toolkit for Remote Learning
Remote Formative Assessment Solutions
Reading at home
Collection of structured lesson plans.
Technology for Teaching
INTERACTIVE
Practical Wisdom Teams to Build Resilient School Systems
BLOGS
Restoring Learning: From Emergency Response to Rebuilding Schooling for the Future
RELATED RESOURCES
The World Bank Group and COVID-19
Learning Poverty
Report: Realizing the Future of Learning