MARCH 25 — The wrong decision probably impairs the long-term future of millions of Malaysians.
Primary schools are open, but secondary schools are slated for an April start. Many in the system risk becoming collateral damage due to Covid-19.
How so?
Students miss three months in 2021 and most of 2020 school time. To assume lockdown remote learning and 2021 class-time will make up for the arrears is simplistic and ignores vulnerable communities.
For instance, the problems of the last 12 months of virtual classes are well documented. And the education ministry opts for window dressing rather than painful and expensive solutions.
The column asks for standardised diagnostics and holistic remedy steps to fix the gaps identified. Otherwise, the most vulnerable are set to demonstrably fall behind or worse drop out from public schools.
Screen time found lacking
The European Commission’s (EC) JRC Technical Report (2020) The likely impact of Covid-19 on education: Reflections based on the existing literature and recent international datasets, puts it plainly:
“More vulnerable students, such as for instance those from less advantaged backgrounds, are especially likely to fall behind during this emergency (Covid-19) period.”
The Schul-Barometer fortnight survey last April, showed Austrian, Swiss and German students between 10 and 19 years lacked as much as eight hours of weekly learning during Covid-19 remote classes.
Factor that to our situation, with our less equipped public education system and the lengthy duration of home study, the gap’s likely massive.
The optics of seeing open school gates should not distract from the danger of reinserting millions with needs forced by a loss of school months. And then foolishly expect organic remedies to play themselves out inside those schools in a cramped 2021 calendar.
The ministry might pull the wool over our eyes.
Ease examination questions, lower pass scores and reduce syllabi are possible ways to seal cracks but the dam floods on as they imperil the children’s future.
In January, the ministry told Channel News Asia (CNA) “teaching and learning will be based on an adaptive and realigned curriculum” which sounds more like the ministry already purchased sealants at the hardware store.
The home learner
Last year’s schooling was two months at the start and approximately three months (mid-July to October) in the middle. That’s about 105 school days, and the standard year is 194. But schooling is not purely about days, as tempos are set over a calendar and not to mention consistency. The subtracted days do not fully describe the deficit.
And how did the study from home solution transpire?
The home experience differs according to socio-economic divide.
T20 parents are forced home, but they are home with their children in safer environments. They can support their children with time and resource, and participate in the excellent suburban game “Who has the most devices in this home” and bear the moans and groans over a WIFI booster not hitting all corners of the home compound.
The M40 manage with ups and downs. Devices are rationed and parents as teaching assistants is always touch and go. Plus, they are distracted by working from home and competing with the kids as much for working spaces.
To be fair with prevailing household income thresholds, half of the M40 are more working class than not, but with better conditions.
The B40 universe shrinks minds. Learning in crammed flat units without resources, within crammed compounds and parents with enough problems of their own, is a nightmare. Schools were these kids' larger learning compounds, and they lost that.
Tired of being anonymous in a class of 40, try being anonymous as one of 40 thumbnails on a screen to your teacher?
And even getting to that can be a challenge. Low-cost apartments are underserviced technologically and everyone forced inside their units by legal decree means a scramble for the limited bandwidth. The poor in rural zones are not better as some end up accessing Internet from sheds, road corners and treetops.
It’s a grim 12 months of learning.
The EC technical report states that a schooling environment is more than just physical classrooms. Students motivate students, and organic support structures emerge within the environment. I remember copying everything from Foo my classmate because I could not read the blackboard from the back.
Often people romanticise about the lowly paid teacher under the tree moving mountains by handing impoverished children the gift of reading.
It’s taken a year of educational chaos to appreciate the profound and personal nature of education in its barest form. The mountain is huge.
Remedy
If the gap is accepted, accept too the inadequacy of our present response.
McKinsey’s report Covid-19 and learning loss — disparities grow and students need help details exactly how acute the problem is for vulnerable communities by pointing out the size of the solution.
It’s instructive to refer to McKinsey since our policy makers are better persuaded by foreign management consultants.
The United States’ NCBI estimates a median of 54 days of school lost. McKinsey proposes two ways to fix the gap, on top of regular schooling. Acceleration academies which are classes over holidays which cost RM6,400 per annum or high intensity tutoring which rakes up RM10,000 per annum. The former being intense short-term classes and the latter prolonged “1 tutor: 2 students” catch-up sessions. Both expensive.
The financial commitment reinforces the argument massive resources are necessary. This is not to blame teachers, 2020 sucked for them too. But to expect teachers to continue the year and plug the previous year’s gap inside the calendar year and care for special needs of vulnerable students is mad.
They require the resource to get the job done.
Some of the resources are available. Up to the end of March, government and private efforts worked to put learning tools in the hands of young people. School is open, but the devices can be part of after school catch ups, for instance.
Can schools provide safe, reliable WIFI spaces for said students to use after school? Has the ministry thought about it?
In the distant past, Malaysians had to adjust to a lengthy recess. It was called World War Two. Schools reopened in late 1945, so students who missed years had to be assessed and then assigned to accelerator classes, including 19-year-olds in Form One classes. Better the 19-year-old mastering the Form One he missed than to pretend he fits in the Form Six he cannot comprehend.
There is no harm in recognising gaps and fix them rather then pretend they are not there.
Those parents who’ve done the job during the lockdowns, supported their children in their learning through these months probably have less to worry. In fact, they may smile knowing the chasm between their kids and those from the vulnerable communities grows steadier, thanks to Covid-19.
I met a parent who takes his 13-year-old to constitutional talk sessions and engage law professors in conversation. I do not worry for that boy.
But what about the rest of them?
For their sake, and their parents, the government better bother.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
