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Int J Educ Dev
. 2021 May 12;85:102429. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.102429
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UNICEF’S LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE EDUCATION RESPONSE TO THE COVID-19 CRISIS AND
REFLECTIONS ON THE IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION POLICY

Janet Lennox


JANET LENNOX

aEducation Specialist in UNICEF in New York, United States
Find articles by Janet Lennox
a, Nicolas Reuge


NICOLAS REUGE

bSenior Education Advisor in UNICEF in New York, United States
Find articles by Nicolas Reuge
b,*, Francisco Benavides


FRANCISCO BENAVIDES

cRegional Education Advisor in UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok,
Thailand
Find articles by Francisco Benavides
c,*
 * Author information
 * Article notes
 * Copyright and License information

aEducation Specialist in UNICEF in New York, United States
bSenior Education Advisor in UNICEF in New York, United States
cRegional Education Advisor in UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok,
Thailand
⁎

Corresponding authors.

Received 2020 Dec 11; Revised 2021 Apr 9; Accepted 2021 May 5; Issue date 2021
Sep.

© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free
information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The
COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public
news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its
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including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and
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for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with
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by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

PMC Copyright notice
PMCID: PMC8426293  PMID: 34518731


ABSTRACT

COVID-19 triggered mass innovation that grew flexible learning modalities and
pathways that can be built upon in future sector plans to make education systems
more resilient. These tools must be paired with investments in the people
expected to use them and strengthened data systems. To ensure plans are rooted
in ever-pressurised budgets, Education Ministers will increasingly need to turn
to economic analysis. Expansion of partnerships will be necessary to secure
greater and more innovative forms of finance but also affordable digital
learning solutions. If these opportunities are seized alongside the disruption
wrought by the pandemic, they can equalize opportunities and accelerate
progress.

Keywords: COVID-19, Policy, Education


1. INTRODUCTION

At its peak at the end of April 2020, schools shuttered by COVID-19 sent home
nearly 1.6 billion students: this was 94 per cent of those enrolled worldwide
and up to 99 per cent of the student population in low- and lower-middle-income
countries (UN, 2020). Although that figure has fallen to 17.9 per cent by the
end of November 2020, more than half of countries in a survey from October 2020
reported that they are combining remote learning and in-person education as
schools reopen (UNICEF et al., 2020). Much hangs in the balance both for
individual learners and countries which rely on the transformative potential of
education to forge a pathway out of poverty to peaceful, prosperous lives and
societies. Will the disruption and mass experimentation seen in education in
response to COVID-19 catalyse transformative change within education systems or
will it simply exacerbate the existing global learning crisis?

This paper analyses lessons learned from both the COVID-19 school closures and
subsequent school reopening process to identify policy options and priorities to
inform education sector planning and budgeting processes and enable
decision-makers to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to accelerate
wide-scale reform and innovation in education. It is intended to improve
education-related programming within UNICEF and contribute to public policy
debates and reforms accelerated by the pandemic. Section 2.1 addresses whether
COVID-19 can be a catalyst to make education systems more resilient with a focus
on education sector planning and data. Section 2.2 examines implications for
education budgets and financing, and Section 3 sets out the overarching
Conclusions.

It relies on a mix of qualitative and quantitative information. Internal
UNICEF-led surveys conducted between June and September 2020 on education
responses to COVID-19 along with the joint UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank survey of
Ministries of Education published in October 2020 provided valuable evidence, as
does analysis of UNICEF-supported household surveys, such as the Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys. Interviews, case studies, and documentation of
lessons learned from UNICEF education teams around the world up to February 2021
are other key sources along with some external literature. Initial data from
these sources paints an interesting picture regarding access to distance
learning modalities, but much work is still to be done to analyse quality and
effectiveness.


2. MAKING EDUCATION SYSTEMS MORE RESILIENT

Although education sector planning processes have become increasingly complex
over the past ten years with the possibility of including more sophisticated
analysis, few countries were prepared for the shock to education systems wrecked
by COVID-19. This is true not only for governments but for development partners
and multilaterals as well. Despite the previous pandemic scares posed by SARS,
MERS and Ebola, the novel coronavirus caught the world off guard by its quick
spread and upending of economies and virtually every aspect of daily life.
Almost no education system was spared, and the widespread school closures and
restrictions galvanized great urgency to overcome the resulting learning gaps.
In order to make education systems more resilient to such shocks over the medium
and long term, the lessons learned within this experience must be appropriately
accounted for in future education sector planning and financing.


2.1. EDUCATION SECTOR PLANS

2.1.1. MEASURING AND MITIGATING RISK

In an ever-globalised world, why had so few education systems planned for a
pandemic or, more generally, an alternative to face-to-face learning? In part,
it is human nature to look backward to previous plans in order to build future
ones. If done too mechanically, this approach can miss future threats and
opportunities. As well, sector planning methodology is still grappling with the
best way to integrate cross-cutting issues, such as emergencies, which are often
not the direct responsibility of the Ministry of Education. Governments also
tend to ignore low probability but high impact risks, particularly in the face
of finite budgets (Gardner, 2020). Decision-makers in constrained systems, where
the number of issues to address frequently overwhelms the resources available,
may necessarily prioritise scant resources towards issues that already exist,
rather than those that may or may not materialise. The result is that education
sector plans may be only partially risk informed.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought home to all countries the importance of
integrating planning for emergencies, including beyond natural disasters, into
sector plans and budgets. As climate change exacerbates the frequency and
severity of natural disasters, the probability that countries will have to
confront overlapping emergencies is growing and, in some cases, inevitable
(UNICEF, 2019). In the disaster-prone Pacific Islands, for example, Cyclone
Harold hit within the first month of COVID-19 school closures and the resulting
switch to distance learning. However, because of the long tradition of emergency
preparedness and disaster risk reduction in schools, Fiji and Vanuatu were able
to minimise the disruption to children’s learning. For instance, the
well-established communication mechanisms among teachers, parents and children
proved invaluable during the switch to distance learning when schools were
closed, during reopening, and for the monitoring of the safety and well-being of
teachers and children. Their previous experience and planning also led them to
prioritise teacher and student well-being throughout school closures and
reopening, and UNICEF was positioned to respond immediately with the provision
of temporary learning spaces and education supplies in areas where schools had
been destroyed in the cyclone. As a result, both countries were able to reopen
all their schools within two months despite the twin emergencies of COVID-19 and
the cyclone (UNICEF, 2020a).

This lesson has not been lost in the recently published Education Sector
Analysis Methodological Guidelines Volume III, which includes more detailed
information on vulnerability and risk analysis that has been informed by the
pandemic (UNESCO et al., 2021). In addition to the newly updated risk assessment
tools, countries can also draw on research undertaken during the pandemic that
identifies promising practices in equitable remote learning and the reach of
different distance learning modalities (Dreesen et al., 2020; UNICEF, 2020b),
and which can be used to tailor distance learning policy and plans. The
three-volume series is the primary resource utilised in the construction of
education sector plans.

While recognising the challenges facing planners in resource-constrained
countries, it is still more cost effective to plan than to react in the midst of
a crisis. Countries can think through a continuity plan of how to reach students
and other relevant groups if schools had to close suddenly as part of its
Education Sector Analysis, whether through high-, low- or no-tech means or, more
likely, a mix. A risk informed analysis could see a country review how it keeps
contact information current and decide on a communication protocol in the event
of an emergency. Other examples include reflecting on whether the curriculum is
suitable for delivery through distance learning and whether teacher training
programmes adequately reflect the skills necessary to deliver using distance
learning or blended learning.

2.1.2. REDUNDANCIES AND RESILIENCE

2.1.2.1. MULTIPLE DISTANCE LEARNING MODALITIES

Concerned with overcoming the digital divide, countries activated a menu of
options, typically a mix of digital and non-digital methods in order to reach
the greatest number of children (UNICEF et al., 2020). This approach to
decision-making is illustrated in Fig. 1 below (UNICEF, 2020c).

FIG. 1.



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Tailoring learning modalities, considering country or regional circumstances.

Source: Extracted from (UNICEF, 2020c).

In addition to the four main remote learning methods presented in Fig. 2 (that
is, online, TV, radio and take-home lessons), internal UNICEF surveys from May
2020 found that 72 out of 135 countries also used SMS messages, instant
messaging or social media platforms to deliver educational content and
facilitate ongoing engagement and communication amongst teachers, students, and
families. In rare cases and under appropriate circumstances, education
ministries enabled home visits for hard-to-reach children.

FIG. 2.



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Provision of remote learning modalities, by income group.

Notes: Countries were not asked directly about remote learning modalities.
Reponses to the question of the effectiveness of remote learning (which included
very effective, effective, not effective, we don’t have such systems) were used
to develop a proxy indicator. The proxy indicator was equal to 1 if countries
rated the effectiveness of the remote learning modality (thereby confirming they
were implementing the modality) and equal to 0 when they selected "we don't have
such systems."

Source: Extracted from (UNICEF et al., 2020).

An example of deployment of multiple distance learning modalities is the
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in Timor-Leste that made learning
materials available via TV, radio, internet, SMS, mobile app and in print
(UNICEF, 2020d). Similarly, in Jordan, lessons were shared online, on social
media, in print and, in exceptional circumstances, through home-based visits to
offer tailored supports for children with disabilities living in refugee camps
(UNICEF, 2020e). Jordan’s national blended learning programme, Learning Bridges,
launched following school reopening to help children recover lost learning from
2020 and accelerate learning in the current academic year, also relies heavily
on printed learning packs that each come with a QR code that links to other
resources, including audio files and online materials, for those children with
access to a smartphone (UNICEF, 2021a).

2.1.2.2. EQUITY AND RESILIENCE

Despite these efforts to mitigate the digital divide through the use of multiple
modalities and a mix of high-, low- and no-tech options, significant swathes of
children were still left behind, compounding significant pre-existing
inequities. Comparing the remote learning response methods, countries’
Ministries of Education reporting available data on access to internet and
broadcast media (UNICEF, 2020b), estimated that a minimum of one third, or 463
million schoolchildren, were not reached with digital and broadcast remote
learning (see Fig. 3 ). Since this estimation does not account for children who
nominally had access to a technology which their country utilized to provide
remote learning but who nevertheless did not access remote learning through that
technology, it is likely that the actual number of children not reached through
these methods is much higher.

FIG. 3.



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Share and number of students potentially reached and not reached by digital and
broadcast remote learning policies, by region (pre-primary to upper secondary).

Notes: The share and number of schoolchildren potentially reached – and the
minimum share and number who were definitely not reached – were estimated using
UNICEF, UNESCO and World Bank data on the implementation of digital and
broadcast remote learning policies in countries as well as MICS, DHS, and other
national household survey data on the availability of technologies (TV, radio,
Internet or PC) needed to study at home. “Reached” indicates potential maximums;
“Cannot be reached” indicates minimums, which are likely much higher.

Source: Extracted from (UNICEF, 2020b).

In some countries, the reach of remote learning was much worse than the
estimates in Fig. 3 suggest. For example, in Nepal, two-thirds of children were
unable to access home-based learning (UNICEF, 2020f). To help close the gap,
since 2019, UNICEF has been working with the International Telecommunication
Union with the aim of connecting every school to the internet through a global
initiative called Giga. Nevertheless, educational exclusion is expected to drive
up dropout, with UNESCO estimating that at least 24 million students are at risk
of not returning to school following the disruptions caused by the pandemic
(UNESCO, 2020a).

While initial data focused on access, it is not the whole of the story. Quality
and efficacy are much harder to track, and the evidence is less robust. This is
discussed in more detail in the sub-section on Measuring Learning.

The identity of those groups of children is not a mystery: unequal access was
exacerbated for rural, poor, linguistic minorities and children with
disabilities (Dreesen et al., 2020; UNICEF, 2020b). Girls, too, face greater
exclusion as exemplified in case studies on the COVID-19 and education response
from Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire (UNICEF, 2020g, 2020h). In addition to the
increased rates of violence, early pregnancy and marriage that girls may
experience as a result of school closures, scarce devices may be prioritised for
boys and so, too, educational opportunities, as the economic impact of COVID-19
throws more families into poverty (Rafaeli and Hutchinson, 2020; UNFPA and
UNICEF, 2020; World Vision, 2020). Fig. 4 , below, (UNICEF, 2020b) shows the
overlapping nature of this educational exclusion while Fig. 5 sheds light on the
gendered gaps in digital skills and use of devices (Amaro et al., 2020).

FIG. 4.



Open in a new tab

Students who cannot be reached, by sex, household wealth and area of residence,
by country economic classification.

Source: Extracted from (UNICEF, 2020b).

FIG. 5.



Open in a new tab

Percentage of adolescents (aged 15 to 18 years) with ICT skills, by sex and
household computer possession.

Source: Extracted from (Amaro et al., 2020).

Girls do not always have equal access to devices or internet connection. For
example, even in India, world renowned for information technology, boys are
twice as likely to own mobile phones than girls (UNICEF, 2020i). Where families
have to share a device, boys may be prioritised over girls (UNICEF, 2020j).
Access to the internet also skews against girls, particularly those living in
the least developed countries (UNESCO et al., 2020b).

Progress in educational rights, which focused largely on expanded access, will
likely be rolled back, especially for girls. In the words of education activist
Malala Yousafzai, girls “are the first to be removed from school and the last to
return.” According to the Malala Fund (Malala Fund, 2020), an estimated 20
million secondary-aged girls are estimated to drop out of school as a result of
the current public health emergency.

Educational exclusion is cumulative based on factors such as poverty, geography,
language, gender, and disability. While there is no silver bullet to ensuring
equity in distance learning, planning for a mix of learning modalities tailored
to a country’s context and provision of appropriate devices – whether tablets or
solar powered radios – for the most disadvantaged families is critical to
reaching the most marginalised groups of children. Building alternative learning
modalities using the principles of universal design; that is, planning for
teaching and learning methods that are more engaging for all learners (learning
through a variety of methods with more interactive elements), presentation
(content presented in a variety of ways and in a variety of languages that meets
children’s needs or learning preferences), and action and expression (learners
showing what they know in a variety of ways) is a useful starting point (World
Bank, 2020a). A checklist proposed by the Inclusive Education Initiative helps
decision-makers work through the overarching considerations of remote learning
choice, community accessibility, educational accessibility, and
individualization (World Bank, 2020a).

Other important solutions to inequity will come from greater collaboration and
partnership, particularly with mobile network operators and other private sector
actors, to expand access to more affordable devices and data. This includes
potentially subsidised devices, more pay-as-you-go options, service bundling,
tiered pricing and zero-rating for educational sites, where appropriate.
Experiences from Timor-Leste and Turkey also highlight the importance of mobile
apps, especially those that allow learners to work offline, as a strategy to
increase reach through the growing numbers of smart phones as well as to reduce
costs for learners to access educational resources (Lennox and Taulo, 2020;
UNICEF, 2020d). The UNICEF-supported Learning Passport is also being rolled out
in a growing number of countries with online and offline capabilities. Jordan’s
Youth Learning Passport programme is one such example (UNICEF, 2021b). Globally,
63 per cent of governments reported taking action to improve access to online
learning platforms through mobile phones (UNICEF et al., 2020).

2.1.2.3. BLENDED LEARNING

As school reopenings accelerated in the second half of 2020, reliance on
multiple learning modalities continued. Most education systems opted for blended
learning, dividing school populations into cohorts and offering a mix of
in-person and home-based learning to mitigate risk, including the potential of
school reclosure. Globally, 54 per cent of 116 countries reported that they were
or would be combining in-person and distance learning when schools reopened
(UNICEF et al., 2020). Others have integrated the alternative learning
modalities established during COVID-19 for broader uses, such as offering a more
comprehensive range of learning materials to students following reopening,
presenting complementary courses, or as a means to offer catch-up programmes to
mitigate learning loss. Blended learning, it seems, is here to stay.

Countries that had longer-term investment or experience with alternative
learning modalities were able to pivot most quickly to home-based learning as
COVID-19 shut down schools. This is evidenced in both high- and low-tech focused
responses.

When responding to COVID-19-related school closures, countries marked by
previous emergencies could draw upon earlier experience implementing radio
education programmes. These include countries that had weathered the Ebola
crisis, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, but also Burkina Faso, Central African
Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan.

A review of the Education Response to the Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in
Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone noted mixed findings on the utility of radio
programming. The three countries developed different implementation strategies,
but the most successful occurred in Sierra Leone where it was set up quickly,
covered multiple subjects from pre-primary through to secondary and where UNICEF
and other education partners distributed over 60,000 solar radios. Over 65 per
cent of families with school-aged children regularly listened to the programme.
The programme was used to communicate lifesaving messages about Ebola
prevention, facilitate catch up learning and provide an educational opportunity
for out-of-school children. The programme was not limited to the period of the
emergency and is considered a useful resource for in-person classes led by
“unqualified teachers”. Guinea’s radio programme was focused mainly on providing
catch up education after schools had reopened but was also considered “good
quality and appreciated by the population”. One respondent stated that radio
education was an “essential way to reinforce pupils’ learning but also to
provide psychosocial support and to mobilize communities against the spread of
Ebola”. In Liberia, however, coverage, quality and usage of radio education were
low. The review did not refer to concrete figures on learning outcomes, noting
overall monitoring challenges, including a tendency to focus on inputs (UNICEF,
2016).

Another example is Uruguay. Its long-term, strategic investment in digital
learning since 2007 through its one-laptop-per-child policy, Plan Ceibal, made
the country more resilient to the shock of COVID-19 (UNICEF, 2020k). These
long-term investments in devices and digital architecture combined with seven
years of teacher development on online teaching prior to the pandemic enabled
Uruguay to pivot quickly to home-based learning during the period of school
closures since the country had a well-established national system of digital
learning already in place, one it had continuously refined over many years. Plan
Ceibal operates nationally, covering “85 per cent of Uruguay’s 1 million
students in the formal education system: 100 per cent in public schools aged
6–15 years and their teachers, as well as students in private schools in poor
areas” (UNICEF, 2020k). Similarly, it was well positioned to move to phased
reopening of its schools for the same reason: the system and the people in it
were prepared to deliver blended learning; that is, a combination of in-person
lessons for students in low-risk rural schools and online classes for everyone
else. It was the first country in Latin America to do so, starting to reopen
schools gradually beginning in April 2020 (Milian et al., 2020; Robinson et al.,
2020; UNICEF, 2020l).

2.1.2.4. INVESTING IN PEOPLE

Not all one-laptop-per-child schemes are successful (Robertson, 2018), and a
powerful lesson from Uruguay’s experience is the importance of investing not
only in the technology but also in the people that bring the tool to life
(UNICEF, 2020l). Since 2010, Plan Ceibal has increasingly focused on teacher
development and modernising pedagogy (UNICEF, 2020l). The same lesson was
repeated in research on promising practices for equitable remote learning, which
recommended strengthening support for remote learning among teachers, parents,
and caregivers for greatest effect on children’s learning and well-being
(Dreesen et al., 2020).

Many countries are already moving to do so or accelerating efforts to train
teachers and other education personnel in their rapidly evolving roles as
facilitators of home-based or blended learning. For example, over 90 per cent of
teachers in Timor-Leste are registered on the online Learning Passport platform,
through which a virtual certification course helped prepare them for school
reopening (UNICEF, 2020m). In Malaysia, education authorities launched not only
online teacher training on distance learning, but also a digital community to
foster peer-to-peer learning and support (UNICEF, 2020n).

Students, too, need the relevant skills. Gaps in digital skills among girls and
women, unless addressed, will also undermine meaningful access to learning
opportunities (Amaro et al., 2020).

If the mass experiment with home-based learning during the pandemic shined a
light on the role of schools and teachers, it also made parents frontline
responders and engaged them in children’s learning as never before (Borisova,
2020; Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021). Research has highlighted the importance of
parental engagement to foster children’s learning, particularly for foundational
skills, such as reading, which the current public health emergency has only
served to heighten. Authors Angrist et al. (Angrist et al., 2020a) highlight the
importance of factoring in communication with parents or caregivers. They
observed that distance learning (basic math problems delivered through SMS
messages) combined with follow-up communication with the household (live calls
from the instructor) increased parental engagement with their children’s
learning (Angrist et al., 2020a). Ultimately, this helped to increase learning
outcomes as well as parental understanding of their children’s level and needs
(Angrist et al., 2020a). Globally, WhatsApp and messaging applications were the
most common communication tool reported (in 84 per cent of countries) for
interactions between teachers, students, and parents/caregivers during remote
learning, followed by mobile phones in 67 per cent of countries (UNICEF et al.,
2020). While these were also the most common modalities in low-income countries,
guidelines for such outreach were much less prevalent among this group.

In Argentina, policy-makers addressed the human element of remote learning by
providing support to everyone in the school community, not just students and
teachers but also school managers and students’ families (UNICEF, 2020o). This
support took the form of a series of tailored booklets, videos, and podcasts.

These trends follow education research concluding that what really matters for
student learning is “the interactions among educators, learners, and educational
materials” (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation and Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, 2008; Cohen and Ball, 1999; OECD, 2010).
It is not enough to simply replace a physical textbook with an online version.
What matters is whether the teacher can capitalise on the tool or resource
through improved instruction to give the student an improved learning experience
(Winthrop and Vegas, 2020). The proof of the realization of this ambition will
only come through tracking improvements in student learning; however, the
initial evidence base is skewed to access, which is easier to measure.

For similar reasons, moving to digital, accessible textbooks that can be
tailored to fit children’s specific learning needs and preferences is a more
powerful change than simply digitising conventional texts. Countries such as
Kenya and Timor-Leste are advancing work that seeks to combine technology,
multiple language versions, and online learning platforms precisely because of
their potential to transform education by overcoming longstanding barriers for
children with disabilities or those from ethnic minority groups (UNICEF 2020m,
2020p).

This emerging evidence is critically important for policymakers looking to build
multiple ways to offer learning in order to make education systems more
resilient. The human element cannot be lost.

2.1.2.5. MULTIPLE LEARNING PATHWAYS

Much of the efforts in the initial phase of the emergency centred around
establishing or expanding a variety of learning modalities to offer continuity,
throwing open a greater range of options to help students resume their previous
studies. The increased number of learning modalities brought students back to
learning. Flipping this around, their proliferation opens the door to a
different but growing ambition, which is to bring learning to the child. For
instance, the initial purpose of the online learning platform, the Learning
Passport, was to bring recognised educational pathways to displaced or refugee
children. The design contemplated the possibility of such students to move back
and forth between educational pathways, for example, reintegrating into their
home or another national education system as their circumstances changed
(UNICEF, 2020q).

The recognition that children’s educational needs vary over time is at the heart
of work at expanding quality learning pathways. If education systems were child
centred, they could accommodate integration and reintegration of not only
children in emergencies but other flexible learning pathways, such as a move
from in-person basic education to a short online skills certification course or
non-formal education, to a more in-depth technical programme with an
apprenticeship. For example, the COVID-19 response in Jordan and the Philippines
specifically included non-formal second chance options to allow adolescents to
finish their basic education and/or bridge to technical and vocational courses
(Al-Smadi, 2020; UNICEF 2020r).

This approach of bringing tailored learning to the child, particularly to
adolescents whose needs may branch out as they grow older, moves in parallel
with the analysis of researchers from the Brookings Institute who criticise the
traditional “stepwise” evolution of education systems that focus first on
improved access, then quality, and finally relevance (Winthrop and Ziegler,
2019). Instead, they advocate for pursuing all three simultaneously to advance
results for children in a timely way (Winthrop and Ziegler, 2019).

2.1.2.6. POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Over 2020, countries became more flexible in their approaches to learning
modalities and pathways. Policymakers will need to ensure that there is parity
and coherence between the different platforms and pathways. In some cases, this
means addressing legislative barriers. For example, Bolivia passed Decree 4260
on 6 June 2020 (Government of Bolivia, 2020) to recognise the different
modalities of blended learning, including in-person, part-time in-person,
online, and distance learning, across the various sub-systems; that is, basic,
alternative and special education as well as teacher training and professional
development. No one modality will reach all children, so countries working to
make their education systems more resilient typically need to opt for a menu of
choices, typically a mix of digital and non-digital options, with mobile apps
allowing offline work garnering growing attention. The precise constellation of
the menu of options chosen may vary both by group of children and/or by region
and will turn on the specific country context, including internet penetration
rate, access to mass media, mobile phone ownership and network coverage as part
of risk informed education sector analysis and subsequent planning and
budgeting.

Beyond the decision around selection of learning modalities, monitoring and
learning assessment will also need to adapt to track learning more frequently
and across the various learning modalities and pathways in order for student
progress to be noted and recognised (Conto et al., 2020). If learning is to put
children and adolescents at the centre, greater integration of different
pathways or sub-systems will be required. Adoption of human-centred plans means
including training and supports for teachers, students, families, and school
managers as well as strategies to ensure ongoing two-way communication whether
through high-tech online platforms or low-tech telephone calls or texts.
Teaching and learning that enable more tailored learning experiences also have a
greater value-add, including resources based on universal design which can
overcome longstanding barriers, including those related to language of
instruction and disability. Combined, these elements will maximise the
likelihood of meaningful impact in learners’ lives.

2.1.3. DATA

Most education systems reactively put alternative learning modalities in place
after the pandemic triggered school shutdowns. In the scramble, monitoring
systems often came later, which led to gaps in the available data to measure
with precision the number and groups of children accessing the various learning
modalities but more critically their learning achievements. These monitoring
gaps tend to be worse the poorer the country as demonstrated by Fig. 6, Fig. 7
below examining online and televised lessons (Conto et al., 2020).

FIG. 6.



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Percentage of countries where governments report monitoring access and assessing
online learning among 97 countries reporting use of online learning modalities,
by income group.

Data source: UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank Survey on National Education Responses to
COVID-19 School Closures (2020)

Notes: The percentages in the figure are simple averages among the number of
countries employing the respective remote learning modality, which is specified
on the x-axis. Income classification is drawn from the categorization of the
World Bank (three countries were dropped from the analysis because of missing
information related to income classification).

Source: Extracted from (Conto et al., 2020).

FIG. 7.



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Percentage of countries where governments report monitoring access and assessing
learning for remote TV learning among 77 countries reporting use of TV as a
remote learning channel, by income group.

Data source: UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank Survey on National Education Responses to
COVID-19 School Closures (2020)

Notes: The percentages in the figure are simple averages among the number of
countries employing the respective remote learning modality, which is specified
on the x-axis. Income classification is drawn from the categorization of the
World Bank (three countries were dropped from the analysis because of missing
information related to income classification).

Source: Extracted from (Conto et al., 2020).

Pre-existing limitations in EMIS (Education Monitoring and Information System)
data, including missing or incomplete information on pre-primary education,
technical and vocational education, non-formal education, learners with
disabilities or learners in crisis-affected settings, also clouded response
plans’ ability to reach all children (UNESCO, 2020b). Just 60 per cent of
countries adopted digital or broadcast remote learning strategies for
pre-primary compared to 91 per cent for the primary level, 87 per cent for lower
secondary and 86 per cent for upper secondary, keeping early learning more
toward the margins of the response despite the undeniable importance of this
foundational level of education (UNICEF, 2020b). See Fig. 8 below.

FIG. 8.



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Share of countries that implemented digital and broadcast remote learning
policies, by education level.

Source: Extracted from (UNICEF, 2020b).

In addition, reopening during the pandemic may entail a process of opening up,
closing, and reopening, meaning that education systems are likely to have to
grapple with considerable fluidity in student enrolment and attendance. For
example, in a single month between October and November 2020, re-closure of
schools increased the number of affected learners by 38 per cent (UNESCO,
2020d). Being able to track student-level data would provide a clearer picture
to policymakers. However, not all systems have this ability. Traditional
paper-based school surveys that feed into EMIS still predominate (UNESCO,
2020c), but this approach will struggle to keep pace with these new phenomena,
if paper-based data collection takes place at all during this year of
disruptions.

Further, most EMIS were not set up to measure enrolment and attendance in
home-based, blended, or in-person learning, which in some education systems now
operate simultaneously. Some countries have responded to the need for these new
kinds of data by establishing additional monitoring systems to track specific
aspects of the country’s education and COVID-19 response to complement what is
available through EMIS. A dashboard is one way to keep tabs on the percentage of
children in face-to-face classes versus blended learning by grade level as part
of school reopening (Government of Indonesia, 2020).

Others have made specific adaptations to their EMIS systems as part of their
response. For example, Kyrgyzstan used its EMIS to undertake school-based water
and sanitation and COVID-19 risk assessments prior to reopening (UNICEF, 2020s),
and in Kosovo, education authorities have integrated tracking and reporting
COVID-19 cases into their system (UNICEF, 2020s). Montenegro has an EMIS module
to better identify students at risk of dropout following school reopening
(UNICEF, 2020t).

Efforts to close gaps in EMIS and provide data to guide decisions are examples
of longer-term policy efforts that can serve to strengthen education systems and
make them more resilient. The fluctuations of case numbers along with school
reopening status is a clear illustration of the importance of strengthening the
linkages between the different data systems used in emergencies and development
settings (UNESCO et al., 2020a). Revamping of these systems would likely require
significant investment in data collection systems and infrastructure,
particularly to enable more frequent data collection and analysis. The pandemic
could also catalyse broader reforms to educational statistical systems to
modernise how data is collected and how the subsequent analysis is done and
shared, including by reducing inefficiencies.

Too often, data is pushed upward to be eventually published in statistical
yearbooks many months later. The drive to embrace digital learning, for example,
could also be applied to EMIS to streamline data collection, from the still
predominant paper-based questionnaires to online surveys delivered via tablet or
smart phone, the latter approach successfully piloted by countries, including
Guinea (World Bank, 2019). This could serve to make data collection faster but
also facilitate feeding back the analysis to the different levels of the
education system; that is, from the schools through to the governing national or
sub-national layer, as well as to the public. Such an approach will also require
investing in people to ensure that data is not simply made available but
utilized to inform decision-making and policy.

This is not an abstract consideration. The Global Education Evidence Advisory
Panel concluded that information to parents and children on education benefits,
costs and quality, where this was not widely available, was a highly
cost-effective way to improve attendance and learning, categorising this kind of
intervention as the one and only “great buy” for Governments at the top of its
rating scale (Angrist et al., 2020b). See Fig. 9 below. More broadly, risk
communication to prevent and allay fears about the spread of COVID-19 is also
seen as a key part of effective COVID-19 response (Haug et al., 2020).

FIG. 9.



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Learning-Adjusted Years of School Gained per US $100 by Category.

Notes: Each category of education intervention shows the learning-adjusted years
of school (LAYS) gained from a given intervention or policy. Each red triangle
represents a cost-effectiveness estimate. The boxplot is ordered from largest to
smallest mean effects and the shaded boxplot describes the 25th and 75th
percentile, with whiskers at upper and lower fences at a distance of 1.5 times
the interquartile range above and below the nearest quartile. The y-axis is
reported on a natural log scale.

Source: Extracted from (Angrist et al., 2020b).

2.1.3.1. MEASURING LEARNING

Learning is the ultimate measure of success of any education system. Thus,
central to responding to COVID-19 and school reopening will be a plan to take
stock of children’s learning (INEE, 2020; World Bank, 2020b). Unequal access to
the tools needed to partake in home-based learning and other supports during the
period of school closures, compounded by structural inequalities, will translate
into greater learning loss among the most disadvantaged groups of learners
(World Bank, 2020b).

When schools reopen, returning students “can be expected to return to school up
to half of a year behind where they were when the school year was interrupted
and more than a year behind where they would have been without school closures”
(Cummiskey, 2021). The younger the student, and the earlier and longer the
school closure, the greater the learning loss. Countries struggling with low
levels of early grade reading may be hit particularly hard. For example, when
looking at students reading fewer than 10 words per minute correctly, the RTI
International model predicted that there would more Grade 3 students unable to
read when schools reopen than when schools started the year prior to COVID in
seven of the eight example countries analysed (Cummiskey, 2021). See Fig. 10
below.

FIG. 10.



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Predicted percentage of non-readers at the start of the school year, at school
closure, and reopening.

Source: Extracted from (Cummiskey, 2021).

Recent guidance from the World Bank recommends the following sequence during
reopening: use the first few days after reopening to focus on well-being,
re-establishing normalcy and rapport to be followed by classroom diagnostic
testing, formative assessment of students’ progress in the period of learning
recovery, and finally, potentially, summative assessment (World Bank, 2020b).

Applied examples highlighted in the Guidance Note include Chile and Brazil.
Chile implemented voluntary diagnostic tests that included a questionnaire on
socioemotional wellbeing and skills administered through parents or caregivers
for children in Grades 1–3 and through self-administered tests to children in
Grades 4 and above, as well as assessments of the fundamentals: reading and
math. Its supports to teachers and school directors covered specific instruction
on the administration, scoring, and use of the results of the diagnostic
assessment during reopening. Resources include video tutorials, protocols, and
guidelines. In São Paolo, Brazil, the Ministry of Education is encouraging both
diagnostic assessment of each student as well as ongoing formative assessment
through quizzes, group projects, homework, and portfolios to guide learning
recovery. Its guidelines note that summative assessments should be based against
what was “actually taught in the classroom” in 2020 rather than against the
standard curriculum-based guidelines that would normally apply. Education
authorities cancelled the state-level large-scale assessment, Sistema de
Avaliação do Rendimento Escolar do Estado de São Paulo, for 2020 given the
prolonged disruption caused by the pandemic (World Bank, 2020b).

Other examples of formative assessment in reopening from UNICEF-supported
education programmes include Madagascar, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and
Malawi (Jenkins and Banerji, 2021). Mongolia, too, devoted the first classes
upon school reopening for formative assessment, the results of which allowed
teachers to tailor catch up classes (UNICEF, 2021c).


2.2. EDUCATION FINANCING AND BUDGETS

2.2.1. THE “TRIPLE SHOCK”

The World Bank refers to COVID-19’s triple shock (Al-Samarrai, 2020). National
economies, households, and foreign aid will all be hit by the economic fallout
of the pandemic, putting pressure on education budgets and squeezing
opportunities for the most vulnerable children. In their joint analysis, UNICEF
and Save the Children estimate that the pandemic pushed another 150 million more
children into poverty in low- and middle-income countries (UNICEF and Save the
Children, 2020). The fall in family fortunes combined with school closures is
expected to lead to girls disproportionately losing educational opportunities,
although in some cases, boys will also be pushed out of education into child
labour to make up for lost income (Azevedo et al., 2020; UNICEF, 2020u). The
estimated lifetime earnings’ loss for all learners is US $10 trillion or a drop
of US $872 per learner per year (Azevedo et al., 2020). The Save Our Future
coalition recommends scaling up cash transfers to offset the shock to household
earnings so that families have sufficient resources to send their children,
particularly their girls, back to school once they reopen (Save Our Future,
2020). The Equitable Education Fund established by the Government of Thailand in
May 2020 is one such example of a large-scale conditional cash transfer
programme focused specifically on reducing educational inequities (Government of
Thailand, 2020; Oxford Policy Management and UN, 2020).

Although it is still early to get a full picture on how the pandemic has
affected education financing and budgets, emerging evidence points to a
disproportional impact on poorer countries. In 2020, governments invested
approximately US $11.8 trillion in stimulus packages (UNESCO, 2020e). However,
only 0.78 per cent or US $91 billion is for education, while the rest is mostly
for health response, social protection and economic recovery (UNESCO, 2020e). Of
those US $91 billion, only US $8.7 billion is in low- and lower-middle-income
countries (UNESCO, 2020e). The education stimulus was used to offer immediate
support during widespread school closures, preparation for the gradual reopening
of schools and post-COVID learning recovery (UNESCO, 2020e).

Comparing education budget data collected before and after the pandemic began
from 29 countries of various regions and income classification shows that
budgets declined in 65 per cent of low- and lower-middle-income countries
compared to only 33 per cent of high- and upper-middle-income countries
(Al-Samarrai et al., 2021). Low- and lower-middle-income countries are also more
likely to report cuts to their education sector wage bill and school feeding
programmes (UNICEF et al., 2020). It is alarming that the gap in annual funding
needed to reach the SDG 4 in low- and lower-middle-income countries has
increased from US $148 billion pre-COVID to near US $200 billion post-COVID over
the next decade (UNESCO, 2020f). This figure dwarfs the annual overseas
development assistance budget for education which in 2018 stood at approximately
US $16 billion (Save Our Future, 2020).

2.2.2. ILLUMINATING THE INEVITABLE TRADE-OFFS

Improvement in the quality of budgets is integral to address gaps in the
implementation of education sector plans. This will prioritise data and evidence
that feed the budget process and also trigger shifts in how policy choices are
framed. Integrated National Financing Framework is a new methodology to help
countries do this. The approach highlights sustainable development spending
priorities alongside an assessment of all the available financing sources:
national, international, public, and private. Once education is set out as a
priority within the Framework, the tool can help to ensure that resources are
mobilised and directed accordingly to avoid or mitigate against the risk of
financing gaps that can turn into implementation gaps in national development
plans.

Given the growing competition for public resources, Education Ministers will
increasingly need to speak the language of their Finance counterparts, perhaps
even adopting standard tools used in economic analysis when presenting education
budgets, including costings, financial projections, and investment cases.
Greater marshalling of evidence and data on cost effectiveness to justify policy
and programmatic choices will be required, both within the education sector and
more broadly. One example of this kind of evidence is the World Bank’s How to
Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently? A Comparison of 150 Interventions
Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric (Angrist et al.,
2020b).

Even before the decision stage, education officials will need to face and assess
the inevitable trade-offs. New tools to help decision-makers would likely help.
Menus of rigorously evaluated programmes provide education and finance officials
guidance in assessing these trade-offs and prioritize the most effective
interventions for a given context and budget (Angrist et al., 2020b). These
could be paired with rigorous analysis of budgets to identify inefficiencies.
Decision trees, such as the one UNICEF developed at the beginning of
COVID-19-related school closures to guide Governments’ decisions about which
remote learning modalities to adopt in which context could offer practical help
(UNICEF, 2020v).

2.2.3. NEW APPROACHES

Results-based financing is likely to continue to grow both within countries but
also among international donors and partnerships. The Global Partnership for
Education, for example, is increasingly moving to a results-based approach,
requiring that at least 30 per cent of grants be disbursed upon achievement of
pre-agreed goals (Global Partnership for Education, 2020). Impact bonds and
education outcome funds may also increasingly appear on the table to attract
private sector and other non-state actors who will be key, in particular in
efforts to expand digital learning.

Public-private partnerships may also garner increased interest as a
cost-effective way to implement promising ideas. For example, in Bulgaria, the
Government leveraged an existing website with online tutoring resources (UNICEF,
2020w). With a small sum of seed money from the country’s education partners,
the company improved its diagnostic testing of students and broadened the scope
of its resources to cover all grades and core courses. In Viet Nam, education
authorities and development partners are increasingly engaged in initiatives to
scale up digital learning, including by mapping internet connection and speeds
as well as providing affordable devices and data (UNICEF, 2020x).


3. CONCLUSIONS

The COVID-19 emergency is a wake-up call for education systems to better prepare
before the next emergency hits. Building back better means improved education
sector planning and budgeting, specifically a more systematic approach to
measuring and mitigating risk right from the design phase, reflected in both
sector plans and budgets. At a minimum, all countries will need a continuity of
learning plan; that is, a strategy outlining an alternative to face-to-face
classes in the event of emergency and ready-to-go ways to facilitate
communication among and within key groups, including emergency or health
authorities, school directors, teachers, students, and their families.

The pandemic which disrupted everyone, everywhere is also a deeper invitation to
rethink education systems by building on the mass experimentation and innovation
to bring about transformational change and accelerate still-too-slow progress
for the world’s children. New modalities and platforms, if planned carefully,
can overcome longstanding barriers due to language, geography, gender, and
disability. For example, digital books and learning materials can be designed to
include different languages. Audio files, as well as adjustable fonts,
sub-titles, more interactive elements tailored to a variety of learning styles
and needs go beyond offering a simple alternative to face-to-face learning. The
education response to COVID-19 shows that likely a menu of options and a mix of
digital and non-digital modalities will be required.

It is also clear that tools in themselves are not enough. Their use depends on
the skill and ingenuity of the people using them. School communities must be
readied before crisis strikes. Teachers must have practised in an ongoing way
how to teach using alternative modalities. The increased engagement of learners’
families and overall appreciation of the importance of schools could be
capitalised upon in the blending learning schemes that predominate in reopening
schemes.

The greater flexibility education systems have had to embrace should be
cultivated to provide children with multiple pathways to learning. The pathways
must rise to meet children wherever they are to provide them with ways to
acquire the knowledge and skills needed to forge a better life, including from
one education to the next or amongst the different component parts as their
needs require. These different pathways must be of quality and be recognised to
bring about transformative change.

Initial data and analysis from the pandemic have focused largely on the question
of access. This has been useful, including to see the yawning gaps, sparking a
push for expanding partnerships, particularly with technology and telecom
companies to find solutions. Much remains to be done to flesh out the evidence
around quality and effectiveness; that is, to measure what children really
learned during the pandemic. It is also a lesson learned in the importance of
measuring student learning at the fore of any education programme, even in
emergency settings.

While measuring improvements in student learning is surely paramount and most
challenging, this emergency brings greater urgency to the question of data more
broadly. The pandemic underlines the need to close existing data gaps on
pre-primary education, technical and vocational education, non-formal education,
learners with disabilities or learners in crisis-affected settings, as well as
emerging needs such as how to track students in blended learning scenarios. It
is also an impetus to modernise how data are collected, analysed and shared,
moving towards faster systems paired with investments in institutional capacity
so that data are not just collected but acted upon in a timely way to make a
real difference to children’s education.

Implementation of sector plans ultimately turns on budgets, and these will come
under increasing pressure as the full economic fallout of the virus becomes
clear. Education ministers will face tough trade-offs and will be called upon to
marshal high quality data and evidence to support their proposed budgets, likely
increasingly speaking the language of their Finance counterparts to make their
case amidst heightened competition for scarcer public resources. Costings,
simulations, and investment cases may grow in importance alongside newer models
of financing, such as impact bonds, outcome funds and public-private
partnerships.

Education has been forever disrupted. If the opportunity is seized alongside the
challenge posed by the pandemic, it can be disrupted for the better to equalize
opportunities and accelerate progress.


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