Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This rapid review focusses on efforts to mitigate the educational impact of previous disease outbreaks, concentrating on school-age learners. It follows two companion papers that reviewed broader secondary effects and attempts to mitigate them (Rohwerder, 2020; Kelly, 2020). It aims to inform the education sector’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis, although there are important differences between previous disease outbreaks and the COVID-19 situation.

Little research attention has been paid to documenting and analyzing attempts of education systems moving quickly and at scale to provide online learning when all or many schools are closed. Related 'good practices' are considered rare, and on the whole, activities and initiatives of these sorts are poorly documented, especially when it comes to the needs of learners and education systems across the so-called 'developing world'. That said, it is possible to extrapolate from the existing knowledgebase about the use of educational technologies in general over past decades, as well as from consensus expert and practitioner wisdom and experience, to offer high-level guidance and 'rules of thumb' for policymakers forced to make related decisions in fast moving, very challenging circumstances with little guidance or relevant experience.

The purpose of the INEE QELO Mapping Project is to identify and “map” (code, analyze, describe) existing social emotional learning (SEL) and psychosocial support (PSS) measurement/assessment tools, as well as guidance documents, being used in the international Education in Emergencies (EiE) sector with the broad aim of informing policy that is grounded in a shared understanding of learning outcomes and monitoring. The work is a priority of the Quality and Equitable Learning Outcomes (QELO) work stream within INEE’s Education Policy Working Group (EPWG) and is funded by Porticus.

This paper assesses that it is time to de-school education, free the school from curricular constraints and empower it to be a laboratory of life that provides a prepared environment which is a Montessori concept meaning that the environment can be designed to facilitate maximum independent learning and exploration by the child and adolescent, therefore that skills and challenges converge, organizing experiences that lead to knowledge.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has had an unprecedented impact on education around the world. In order to understand and face this challenge, educators and researchers undertook a range of research, however the time that teachers have to undertake professional development and seek out such literature to inform their practice has been sorely lacking. Furthermore, literature exploring the wider variety of stakeholder experiences has been suggested to be missing. This living rapid systematic review synthesises K-12 research on teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, published in English and indexed in 5 international databases. 89 studies were included for synthesis in the present article, and the results are discussed against a bioecological model of student engagement.

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on school education. It has affected a large number of children across states, class, caste, gender and region. The shutting down of schools and the decision of shifting traditional classrooms to digital platforms is not only increasing learning inequality among children, but also pushing a large number of children out of school due to the digital divide. Other than learning, the absence of schooling would also have a long-lasting effect on the health and nutrition of children. The role of the budget in the current situation as well as beyond the pandemic is very crucial to ensure inclusive education for all. This policy brief highlights some of the issues associated with school closures which need immediate attention. It also suggests some short-term policy measures that can be implemented in the coming Union and State budgets. However, the overall direction of allocations should not only be limited to addressing issues arising from the pandemic but should go beyond. COVID-19 has created an opportunity for governments to learn valuable policy lessons to deal with such situations and also to revamp the system so that it is better equipped to deal with them. In this context, the policy brief has also put forward a set of long-term measures that the government should implement in the due course of time.