Inequalities among children worsening as face-to-face learning suspended - Experts
Published:Monday | December 7, 2020 | 6:01 PM
Judana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have asserted that the level of inequality among children will worsen as online learning persists.
As a result, they say the recovery of the education sector will require additional resources and improvement in the distribution process.
“The longer it takes us to go back to in-person classes, the longer and more profound the inequalities will be,” said Claudia Uribe, UNESCO's director for the Regional Office of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean.
She was speaking during Monday's virtual launch of the report ‘Reopening schools in Latin America and the Caribbean: Keys, challenges and dilemmas to plan the safe return to classrooms’.
Uribe said the inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the need to incorporate equity and the prioritisation of vulnerable populations.
On March 31, all Latin-American and Caribbean countries, with the exception of Nicaragua suspended in-person classes.
"After nine months of closed schools, the region still is facing a very complex situation. Sixteen countries continue to have all their schools closed, 17 countries have partially reopened their schools and only nine countries have fully reopened their schools,” Uribe said.
The report also highlighted that the gaps in education systems will worsen if education is not prioritised in COVID-19 response plans.
Last week, the acting permanent secretary in Jamaica's education ministry, Grace McLean, told the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament that the learning loss has been significant.
Diagnostic assessments at the grade-six level were worrying, with mean scores being 23 for Mathematics, 24 for Science, 33 for Language Arts, and 31 for Social Studies.
Meanwhile, the lack of potable water in schools is another barrier to their safe reopening.
UNESCO's Santiago education specialist Alejandro Vera said 16 percent of schools in the region do not have access to drinking water and the situation is much worse for rural schools with 28 percent of them having access.
“Those group of children who belong to the more vulnerable homes may see their access to drinking water limited both in their homes and at school, so there is a double deprivation of their rights,” he said.
Some educators are among the high-risk population, having pre-existing health conditions, while six percent of school principals in the region are older than 60 years.
“We see a potential need for more teachers but can be addressed with a couple of restrictions - one is budget. We need resources in order to have more faculty and the other restriction is that even if we have resources, not all countries have sufficient, trained and certified teachers who could be called to take on these jobs,” he explained.
Lead education specialist in the education division of the IDB, Alejandro Morduchowicz noted that early indications of the spend of education budgets during 2020 do not indicate cuts.
However, he said there is no evidence that education has been prioritised by governments through the economic response packages amid the COVID-19 emergency.
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