Back to school in the pandemic

Season 2, episode 6

Back to school in the pandemic

The education of almost 91% of the world's children has been affected by school closures due to COVID-19. As school doors start to reopen, what does it look like for students? Hear how the education of Canada’s children has been impacted by the pandemic, and travel with us to Viet Nam to find out about their experience with back to school.

Producer: Priyadarshini Mitra

Sound Mix: Chandra Bulucon

Episode Transcript 

[00:00:02.77] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

[00:00:05.82] That's what math, science, and other lessons have sounded like, these past months, for 12-year-old Sanamariam Sise in Ethiopia-- voices on the radio, instead of teachers in front of blackboards-- siblings and parents working from home, instead of having classmates and friends around.

[00:00:23.61] She is one among 1.6 billion children affected by school closures due to COVID-19. At the height of the nationwide lockdown in April, almost 91% of the world's students, in more than 194 countries, were out of school. Now, as schools around the world gradually open their doors once again, on this episode, we try to see how the education of Canada's children has been impacted by the pandemic. And we travel to Vietnam, to find out what back-to-school looks like there. I'm David Morley, president and CEO of UNICEF Canada, and the host of the For Every Child podcast.

[00:01:23.37] An entire generation has seen its education interrupted. The COVID 19 crisis is also widening preexisting gaps. The most vulnerable children and youth-- those living in poor or remote areas, girls, refugees, children with disabilities, and forcibly displaced children-- they're struggling the most to continue their learning. And these learning losses threaten to extend beyond this generation. In fact, they could erase decades of progress.

[00:02:00.07] On the other hand, this crisis has stimulated innovation within the education sector. UNICEF has supported several innovative approaches to education and training continuity. Radio and television lessons from South Sudan to Timor-Leste, WhatsApp group with teachers sending lessons via smartphones in Syria, or the Learning Passport, a digital learning platform in Kosovo, Ukraine, and many other countries around the world.

[00:02:28.92] Still, learning from home is hard. And for millions of children without access to the internet, television, or radio, it's certainly proven to be harder still. At least a third of the world's schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning. We need urgent investment to bridge this digital divide, to reach every child with quality education and, most critically, to prioritize the safe reopening of schools.

[00:02:58.95] What about here at home, in Canada? UNICEF recently released Report Card 16 that finds Canada may not be as great a place for children to grow up in as we might expect for one of the world's richest countries. Lisa Wolff, UNICEF Canada's director of Policy and Research, joins me to talk about this. Lisa, could you tell us what the Report Card 16 says about the state of children and youth in the country?

[00:03:29.43] Yes, David. As you say, for 20 years now UNICEF Report Cards have measured the state of children and youth in wealthy countries. And we launched UNICEF Report Card 16 on September 3 and, I think, surprised a lot of Canadians, that Canada ranked 30th out of 38 rich countries, just prior to the pandemic. So even before the crisis, some of the richest countries in the world, including ours, have been failing to ensure that all their children have good childhoods, with good physical and mental health, supportive relationships, and protection from violence.

[00:04:06.81] And Canada was among the countries with the best economic, environmental, and social conditions for growing up but the poorest outcomes for children and youth.

[00:04:16.89] That's such a shock for us as Canadians, I think, because we always seem to think that, because we're a wealthy country and blessed with natural resources, that's enough for a good childhood.

[00:04:34.47] Yeah. And in rich countries, what's been happening over the years-- and we've measured this in our Report Cards-- is that child well-being has pretty much decoupled from national wealth. National wealth has continued to climb; child well-being is stalling, in many indicators. And what we're learning is that it actually matters more how you share the wealth that you have in your country rather than how much of that wealth you actually have.

[00:05:03.99] Yeah. Sharing-- my grandkids learn about that in kindergarten. They learn about sharing. And then I think, OK, kindergarten, going back to school for my grandkids-- this returning to school during the pandemic has become a major focus and concern for Canadians. And what does this Report Card tell us about school in Canada?

[00:05:31.77] David, you mentioned sharing and fairness. And as we come out of lockdown, it is children's turn to come out from inside and return to school. And it's really urgent that they do that, to support their well-being.

[00:05:47.13] It's clear that long-distance learning wasn't working for most students-- we heard that from young people, all through the lockdown-- and that confining kids in their homes has been disrupting every aspect of their childhood. So returning them to school and doing our best to keep them there by keeping community transmission low is really key to restoring their mental well-being, their physical health, and their social development, as much as their education. And the education system is one area of public policy in Canada where we were actually doing relatively well, prior to the pandemic. Our Report Card finds Canada stands near the top of the league table. We ranked 13th, based on the number of children and youth who are still in school and have reached a minimum level of proficiency in reading and math at age 15.

[00:06:42.63] So this is usually a departure for Canada that we see in the Report Cards. Canada lags in a number of aspects of well-being but tends to do well in education. It's the only aspect of children's lives in Report Card 16 where Canada ranks in the top third.

[00:07:01.39] So why do you think we might have to start reimagining education in Canada-- that we can't-- if we were doing well, we just-- but we know somehow that we can't just go back to that pre-pandemic normal.

[00:07:17.41] Right. So we have a situation where Canada's kids were getting pretty good grades, doing fairly well at school compared to their rich-country peers prior to the pandemic, and then the bottom fell out of education-- which was one of our better-functioning systems-- not for every child. We know that there have been very stubborn gaps for some Indigenous children and for racialized Black youth. But what we're also seeing, in this Report Card, is that school has not always been a place of support.

[00:07:52.81] Even before the pandemic, one in four young people said they had difficulty making friends at school. One in five was frequently bullied, earning Canada a rank of 23rd. And it might also help explain why fewer than one in five young people says they like school a lot. So, while Canada schools have tended to offer high-performing learning environments, they've also been some of the most competitive, high-pressure school environments, based on young people's perceptions, one of the more competitive environments in the world. While, on the other hand, Norway appears to create schools that have both a strong sense of support for young people, for their well-being, and high educational achievement.

[00:08:38.29] So I think, heading into school this year, heading through a pandemic, we want to leave behind some of the things about school that weren't working for kids-- the difficulty in fostering good relationships with peers, and feeling like school is a place of support, that high-pressure container-- and focus more on supporting young people's well-being. And they're going to need that, coming out of lockdown, as well. So at least as important as educational achievement is going to be supporting their social recovery, their mental well-being.

[00:09:18.04] Well, that's what we are saying, or you and I [LAUGHS] are saying and others are saying. And we're adults. But young people themselves-- how do they feel about school now?

[00:09:30.96] It's a good time to ask this question, David. We've heard a lot from adults-- parents, teachers, policymakers-- who are having, in some sense, some public battles about what back-to-school should be like. I think we've moved past the point of "if" schools should open and the focus is on how. And young people have a lot to say about that.

[00:09:57.61] We asked our U-Reporters how they were feeling about school online, through the pandemic, and how they're feeling about going back to school and what's important to them about going back to school. And what we learned during the lockdown period was, 40% of U-Reporters said they actually felt worse about school than they did before the pandemic. So online learning wasn't working, for a good proportion of them. And the challenges of online school included trying to find the motivation consistently to get online and do the work.

[00:10:34.35] 26% said they missed school a lot. And some were relieved to have a reprieve from that high-pressure environment we were speaking of. But what they're saying, in terms of what their expectations and hopes are as they go back to school this fall, is that they really do hope that teachers are empathetic, they know that they're looking forward to the social connections again, but school has also been a place for many where they could access a meal, where they could get some physical activity through the extracurricular activities. It's a way that they manage their mental health.

[00:11:13.21] So we're going to have to make sure that schools are good and kind places and reach out to the young people who might have become disengaged through online learning.

[00:11:25.23] Thank you, Lisa, for sharing that. Kind and empathetic environments in school definitely has to be made a priority. And I'm joined by 19-year-old Liv, who definitely agrees with that message. She joins me, to talk about being a young person in Canada. Liv, from your perspective, how is it being a young person these days? Does the pandemic make it harder?

[00:11:51.63] I think that's a really good question. And I think being a young person in Canada even before the pandemic hit wasn't very easy-- that Canada definitely has a lot of things to work on, to improve child and youth well-being in a lot of different areas. But the effects of the pandemic hitting and affecting everyone in the country really emphasized a lot of the issues we were struggling with before and just made things even more difficult. Like, job security in young people. If we were looking for a summer job, that was pretty much not able to happen because of the pandemic. And I know a lot of people, myself included and a lot of my friends, we lost our jobs. Or if some people were able to continue to work, they're expected to take on a lot of new tasks.

[00:12:50.58] And it's a whole lot of adjustments-- which everyone is going through, but it's, I think, especially very difficult for young people. And that goes into housing, as well. I know, when this pandemic hit, it was kind of the end of the 2019-2020 summer school year, and it forced a lot of young people to have to move back home and reconsider if they'd be able to go back to school, if they'd be able to move out again, or what their finances or life will look like for the next coming year.

[00:13:26.89] So the pandemic has not been easy on, I think, any young person. Myself, I've been experiencing just a lot of worries, a lot of paranoia of just where the world is going. I do deal with mental illnesses, and that's something I was struggling with before the pandemic. And being kind of quarantined at home and not able to see my friends, not able to see my cousins or my grandparents, family members, or just being able to go out as a-- especially in the summer, with the nice weather rolling around-- and then we kind of all had to stay at home. And that was really hard on me. And kind of having panic attacks about what my school year was going to look like and what was happening with my relationships with my friends, with people, and not being able to have the same kind of mental-health support that I had pre pandemic, where I had regular appointments with my psychiatrist or counselor or whoever.

[00:14:35.91] And not being able to see my support system in person is really difficult. It's all on a phone call now, and everyone is asking, how have you been doing throughout the pandemic? My psychiatrist will be like, oh, what's new? And I'm like, well, [LAUGHS] not much is that new, because they haven't really been able to leave my house.

[00:14:57.45] But every day, I just kind of wake up, and it's the same cycle of waking up, checking the news-- like, the damage report of how many new cases are there, and how many people are recovering, and what's the government saying, what's the health officials saying-- manage through it, and cope the best you can, and get through the days being in this quarantine. I live in Ontario. And as Ontario has been opening up, I'm not fully ready to open up as quickly as the province has been able to.

[00:15:39.96] That does sound hard. This pandemic definitely hasn't been easy for any young person. And now you're heading back to school. Are you excited? Are you worried?

[00:15:51.00] Yeah. It's interesting. It's definitely something-- like, going back to school in the midst of a global pandemic is something that I don't think anyone was able to prepare for. But I have a younger brother. He's 14, and he started high school this year. So-- a weird way to start high school. Grade nine, he didn't have his end-of-year exams and stuff. And he finished up his last couple of months of school online, and I know that was such a weird and very quick transition to have to go through.

[00:16:25.26] I've been out of school this year. I've been on a gap year, but I will be starting at University of Guelph-Humber for their Justice Studies program, and it will be my first year in postsecondary, which I'm really, really excited for, but it's really weird, knowing that I'll be starting university in my bedroom. [LAUGHS] I'll be starting university in my bedroom on, like, a Zoom call or part of my Microsoft Teams and stuff.

[00:16:58.14] And I know all students are going through this, we're all in this together, but it's strange that I won't be able to-- I'm not returning to school onto campus where I'll be able to interact with my peers and my classmates and make new friends. And I'm nervous, but I'm a child of the 21st century, growing up with technology all around me. But I'm really hoping that, by maybe second semester, universities across the province or hopefully across the country will be able to transition a little bit back more into in-person learning as well as having the virtual learning as an option.

[00:17:47.05] So would you say you want things to go back to normal? What's the one thing that you'd take away as a learning from the pandemic?

[00:17:55.42] I don't think we should be wanting to necessarily go back to normal, because I don't think normal was necessarily working, And this time, 2020, has been a weird year in general. We are living through a pandemic, and We're also seeing a rise in social movements and the Black Lives Matter movement, which is amazing, and young people really using their voices to speak up and take initiative in starting protests, and all sorts of ways to use your voice and your creativity and put it into art and stuff.

[00:18:36.66] I think this pandemic has kind of forced people to communicate better. I think, as a society we're communicating and recognizing a whole lot of issues and systematic issues that were failing, like the pandemic and how it especially affects minority groups and people and how that turns-- like, you take a global-health-crisis issue, and you have to see the social-justice issues and that as well, and how the pandemic is not equally affecting everyone across the board.

[00:19:09.16] But even in like my own community or my own home, just being at home has made my family and I just kind of have to communicate better amongst each other, because we're around each other so much. And I can imagine so many other young people are in similar situations, where things are not super great at home and maybe you have conflict with your parents or siblings or people living in your house, and it's not always a safe place to be able to do your school your learning, get your education in your room, if you have parents arguing in the background or you don't feel that you're safe and welcomed in a good environment. We really have to communicate and put our differences aside, because we're all in the same boat right now-- or, all in different boats but in the same storm.

[00:20:12.26] What would you say teachers, policymakers, everyone involved in school reopening-- what should they be keeping in mind?

[00:20:21.14] I think there needs to be extra mental health support for students going back to school-- elementary-school age, middle-school age, high-school age, postsecondary-- so students know that the school knows that they are going through a difficult transition, and they know it's not easy, and they're there for the students, to support them. If they're feeling really extra anxiety about going to school every other day, or what school might look like in 2021. There's no such thing as normal, right now. Right?

[00:21:00.47] It was great speaking with you, Liv. And our best wishes for your school year ahead.

[00:21:07.64] Slowly but surely, children around the world have been safely heading back to school. Countries like Bhutan, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt have seen children back in their classrooms, in the past few months. Measures like hand-washing stations, physical distancing, mask wearing, and temperature checks are being integrated into school life.

[00:21:29.78] Vietnam too welcomed children back into classrooms in May. We have with us Simone Vis, Chief of education for UNICEF Vietnam. To begin with, Simone, could you tell us what were some of the challenges that children in Vietnam faced in accessing education during the COVID-19-related restrictions?

[00:21:50.72] Ooh, good question. There were actually many challenges, and some of them may sound familiar with the families and the children in Canada, and some of them are unique to the situation here in Vietnam. But first of all, our lockdown started much earlier.

[00:22:10.79] Schools in Vietnam closed for Lunar New Year, at the end of January, and they remained closed until early May. And that meant, for Vietnam, that 21 million children saw their learning interrupted. And even though the schools have reopened as from May, teachers are still assessing the learning gaps resulting from that long period of not going to school. And UNICEF is supporting with that, and we are also assessing, at this moment, not only focusing on the learning gaps but also to see what impact it actually had on the psychosocial and mental well-being of children.

[00:22:59.57] However, when schools closed here, and in an attempt to ensure the continuity of learning, the Ministry of Education here in Vietnam started offering distance learning online to students. But the reality in the country here is that the COVID-19 accentuated a stark digital divide. Many students living in remote regions have limited access, here in Vietnam, even under the normal circumstances.

[00:23:32.46] So let me give you an example. Around one and a half months ago, I visited Lao Cai province. And that is in the mountainous northern region of Vietnam. And there I spoke with a 14-year-old girl named Sum, and she's from the Hmong ethnic minority.

[00:23:53.96] And she actually said that the hardest part of online learning was that none of her relatives have internet at home. So Sum and her brother had to walk to the nearest government building, to try to connect to the Wi-Fi from outside the gate and then download the learning materials that their teachers were sending. And as we looked at school data of her school, we saw that only 15% of children in the area where Sum lived have mobile devices, to learn at home. So the situation in Lao Chi is really exposing the digital divide in Vietnam between children that have digital learning opportunities, often in large cities, and those children that do not.

[00:24:45.77] But that is only from a student's side. It's also that not all teachers feel confident with teaching online and using new technology-- or, new technology for them-- in the school model that remains largely traditional and based on teachers giving instruction on a blackboard in front of a whole bunch of students. So as a fact, prior to the COVID crisis, over 90% of the teachers in remote areas had already mentioned that they were not using any kind of modern technology in their class. So, from nothing to suddenly having to provide online learning opportunities to children, that is a huge step.

[00:25:34.64] And the same is actually for parents. A lot of parents are digitally illiterate and therefore not able to support their children's learning, even if the devices are at home.

[00:25:50.60] So UNICEF has been working with the government of Vietnam to better understand the needs of children with disabilities but also to understand the gender differences in access and learning through distance education, so that this pandemic actually becomes an opportunity for improving the responsiveness of distance education at scale. So the digital divide also sparked increased engagement and new partnerships with, for example, companies like SAP, Microsoft, and other technology firms, as it raised the possibility of the adoption of a single online education platform to be used throughout Vietnam and to host the new curriculum that encompasses the digital skills.

[00:26:47.77] You mentioned a digital divide. But besides that, would you say there was a gender gap also, in accessing education during the pandemic?

[00:26:56.59] Evidence shows that the prolonged school closure resulted actually in increased domestic violence, sexual abuse, and even teenage pregnancies. Some girls in Vietnam have reported that they would have preferred to put themself at risk for COVID-19 in public rather than to stay at home, isolated with a violent and abusive family member. For example, last week we spoke to a secondary-school principal in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and he reported that two female students of his school did not return when his school had reopened in May, in order for him to find out that both minors were married off.

[00:27:46.78] So UNICEF, with other partners, are joining hands to strengthen the national response mechanisms to violence against women and children in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. So, concretely for the education sector, this means to support development and the delivery of training programs for teachers, for school managers, and other school staff. And this is actually currently ongoing on gender-based violence in school and psychosocial support, and also for teachers to recognize-- or identify better-- children they suspect to be a victim of domestic violence, in a way that does not do harm to the victim itself.

[00:28:38.98] That's interesting to hear. So now the children have headed back to school in Vietnam, in the last few months. What have been some of the factors that were considered, so that they could have a safe return to school after the pandemic?

[00:28:54.34] The government of Vietnam, with UNICEF support, we focused on a couple of things. First of all, of course, we needed to focus on the fact that children could return safely to school-- healthy and safely-- but also actually that all children return to school, leaving no one behind and even actually giving a second chance to those who were, prior to the crisis, already out of school. UNICEF supported the government with the development of what we call the "school safety assessment criteria," setting out 15 criteria to determine whether a school was considered safe to reopen. And these criteria were in line with international standards, including taking into account again the mental well-being and the psychosocial support, whether a system is in place for that, whether there was running water in schools-- because in Vietnam, unfortunately, approximately 30% of the schools do not have running water in their schools, which became an even bigger issue now that hand-washing is so extremely important.

[00:30:13.21] What I mentioned were 15 criteria. And schools had to do a sort of self-assessment. And, based on that, they could reopen or not. And if a school would not meet these criteria, the government would, for example, with support of partners-- amongst others, UNICEF-- truck water to schools or, if worse come to worse, at least made sure that there were hand sanitizers at school, so that the hygiene could be guaranteed for the children.

[00:30:46.93] Already prior to schools reopening, UNICEF advocated successfully with the government of Vietnam to make actually adjustments to the curriculum, meaning, dropping certain tests and modules and carrying over others to the next school year, as this was meant to give boys and girls the whole of next year to catch up their missed learning, instead of putting a lot of emphasis on academic results and a lot of additional pressure and psychosocial stress for children who have suddenly to catch up all those lost months in just a couple of weeks' time.

[00:31:31.95] What also happened here in Vietnam is that we had a sort of phased reopening of the schools, with physical-distancing measures. So it was decided to actually open schools with a double-shift system, to allow physical distancing. And the students, especially those students who did well with the online learning, these children were requested to stay at home and continue their online learning. And those children who did not have those opportunities were the ones whose access back to school was first ensured

[00:32:12.21] Simone, thank you for sharing Vietnam's experience with our listeners. Hearing your account and those of our guests earlier, it's clear-- reopening schools must also come with reopening schools better, reimagining what schools and education means for children. It is their right.

[00:32:34.92] Learn more about how UNICEF is supporting back-to-school around the world at unicef.ca. And with that, we come to the end of our show. Thank you for listening, and stay safe.