A glimpse on Impacts of COVID-19 on Education

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). First identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China in December, it has spread across 188 countries and territories with more than 31.7 million cases and 973,000 deaths. And the message of hope is that more than 21.8 million people have successfully recovered from the disease.

Common symptoms of COVID-19 includes fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath or breathing difficulties, and loss of smell and taste. While most people have mild symptoms, some people develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) possibly precipitated by cytokine storm, multi-organ failure, septic shock, and blood clots. The incubation period can be from one to fourteen days.

As we all know the world is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic for more than six months back. COVID-19 is the greatest undergoing health issues which have established a health crisis in every country. But other than a health crisis, COVID-19 has also greatly influenced other areas like business, education, social life, mental health, economic health, etc.

Effect of COVID-19 in Education 

Since near-total education institutions all over the world are temporarily closed to control the widespread virus, the pandemic has influenced the worldwide education sector massively. This lockdown of school and colleges have influenced more than 1 billion scholars. According to UNICEF, as of the first week of September, 46 countries follow nationwide closures and 27 are amending local closures, and 72 countries’ schools are currently open. This impacts about 72.9 percent of the world’s student population. Classes in 2020 have been online completely, assessment and grading have been different. Evaluation is based on assignments and homework.

Since this lockdown has shut all the world, including educational institutions, it has created panic among students, mostly new graduates applying for further study. Students applying for colleges and universities are in a panic as many colleges have deferred intakes or not accepting applications. Many universities are accepting applications by shifting their whole academic module into online while others still fail to seek favorable alternatives. And another major problem is pending graduation, hundreds of students who were supposed to graduate this year are not graduating.

The scenario in South Asia 

While children across much of Europe and some parts of the United States are going back to school for the start of a new year, but in many other parts of the world, coronavirus restrictions have kept classrooms closed, mostly in Asia in Africa. According to the United Nations, around 600 million children have been affected the nationwide lockdowns.

New research by UNICEF tells that around 22 million children have missed out on early childhood education during this COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to that, millions of school and colleges students are deprived of education privilege throughout the year. Many governments as well as few private educational institutions are not well equipped with modern technologies and follow the traditional style of learning. Many parts of South Asia still lack reliable internet facilities, and the internet rate is also high which is not affordable for many families. And the government is constantly failing to address this.

Here are some things you might want to do while staying at home