By: Wayne Campbell
July 20, 2021
“Learning is never lost, though it may not always be “found” on pre-written tests of pre-specified knowledge or preexisting measures of pre-coronavirus notions of achievement.”- Rachael Gabriel, Associate Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Connecticut.
Professor Rachael Gabriel has a different outlook regarding the concept of learning loss. The professor argues that students continue to learn about themselves and school when we tell them that their efforts to engage with school this year were simply not enough. They learn about inequality when they see some districts open in person and others not, some people vaccinated and others not. They learn that the world still assumes all children live with their parents, and that it is safe to do so. Professor Gabriel concluded that teachers learned too that their already lean curriculum could be even leaner and more focused. That practice and application could and should look different at home, and that family members, friends and neighbors are a resource not only for supporting what happens in school, but for extending and elaborating on it in ways we cannot predict. The concept of learning loss is actually designed to describe declines in knowledge test scores emerging from comparative analysis of standardized test results. In spite of Professor Gabriel’s views, the past academic year has not been anything close to normal due to the disruptions associated with the novel coronavirus. The World Bank states that children’s learning has suffered immensely, “And because the education sector also provides health, nutrition, and psychosocial services, the overall welfare of children has declined substantially. Their recovery should start immediately.” As a result the United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Bank have launched a joint mission called Mission: Recovering Education 2021 which focuses on three priorities: bringing all children back to schools, recovering learning losses, and preparing and supporting teachers.
In the Jamaican landscape there have been calls for an extension of the academic year in order to address the learning loss. The idea is rather appealing given the learning loss many of our students have suffered since March of 2020 when educational institutions were ordered closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Jamaican government has responded to the disruptions in the 2020/2021 academic year by rolling out a ‘Recover Smarter-National School Learning and Intervention Plan’, aimed at helping students to recover from learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The summer school sessions will be held for approximately two hours per day, Monday to Thursday, from July 5 to August 19. The summer school will be delivered online and face-to-face, with the latter component primarily targeted at students who have not been consistently engaged with the education system. Just over 17,000 students have signed on for summer school. According to the Education Ministry more than 120, 000 students have not been engaged since the close of schools in March of 2020. Some will argue that much of the discourse regarding an extension of the school year is being done in a research vacuum.
Research Driven
Jill Barshay in an article for The Hechinger Report argues, it seems intuitive that what children need now is more time. She added that since students missed so much instruction during the pandemic, teachers should get extra time to fill all those instructional holes, from teaching mathematical percents and zoological classifications to discussing literary metaphors. “We don’t really know what the effects are,” said Jean B. Grossman, an economist at Princeton University and MDRC, a nonprofit research organization, which has studied this research literature. Grossman added that lengthening the school day or year isn’t a new idea. The 1983 report A Nation at Risk highlighted how much more instructional time children received in other industrialized nations. Japan had 240 school days when compared to Europe which averaged between 190 and 210 days. The average school days in the United States of America rounds off at 180 days. The discussions surrounding lengthening the current academic year must be done in a targeted approach especially as it relates to boys’ under-achievement. We must be mindful of our unique socio-cultural factors in Jamaica as we seek creative ways to address the learning loss from the pandemic. Male underachievement is more a socio-political issue than an educational one. Social and cultural factors have continued to influence the various ways in which masculinity is defined not only in the Jamaican society but societies all over. Masculinity and what it means to be a man does impact on the education of our boys. Many boys view the school experience as feminine. Our boys’ life choices are severely circumscribed by the dominant notions of masculinity competing with “multiple masculinities” in the society. Jamaica’s Education Regulations 1980 which governs teaching and learning; Regulation 7 (3), states every public educational institution shall meet for classes not less than 190 days of each school year unless it is prevented from doing so for reasons approved by the Minister. This 190 minimum days is above that of the United States of America but less than that of Japan. South Korea has 220 days as their minimum number of contact days for school. Finland has a maximum of 190 days; however, most schools are in sessions fewer days. Finland’s education system regarding student outcomes is among the best if not the best in the world. This clearly indicates that the total number of school days is not a critical factor in student performance. This data driven reality forces us to examine other factors which are important in determining student performance. A significant number of our students are from dysfunctional families. Summer is often viewed and utilized as a time to juggle for many students in order to get themselves financially ready for the upcoming academic year. If such students did not log online during the interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic it’s doubtful that they will during the hot summer months. Many students take their summer holidays before the official end of the academic year in order to juggle to earn funds to buy school uniforms, bags and shoes. It is not uncommon for schools in some areas to modify the start of their end of year examinations to coincide with students unofficial summer holidays. We have neither summer nor winter in Jamaica, but our summer months of June, July and August are extremely hot. In addition to the intense heat is the discomfort that is associated with many of our poorly designed school building; teaching and learning is that more challenging. Many students continue to suffer from poor internet connectivity. There is also the issue of COVID19 vaccine hesitancy. Importantly, a significant number of our teachers as well as students old enough have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Undoubtedly, this vaccine hesitancy among these key stakeholders can impact the return to face to face school for the upcoming academic year.
State Intervention
Former President Barack Obama called for increasing learning time and his administration gave almost 1,800 low-performing schools extra money, called School Improvement Grants. Most chose to lengthen the school day, generally by an hour, above the national average of six and a half hours. But the extra time was coupled with other school reforms, such as teacher evaluations, which made it generally impossible to tell how much of a difference the extra time alone was making. One 2012 review of studies on learning time found that the extra time often didn’t produce academic benefits for students and when it did, the benefits were small. “The findings in the literature indicate that simply adding time is insufficient,” the authors at Child Trends, a nonprofit organization, concluded. (The Wallace Foundation, which is among the funders of The Hechinger Report, commissioned this research review.) The 38 studies in the review that focused on longer days or longer years sometimes found an academic gain for just one group of students, for example, third graders, or for just one subject. One study found higher achievement in science. One didn’t. However, when academic benefits were found, the researchers noticed that low-income and low-achieving students were more likely to reap them. Researchers need to get a better handle on the amount of extra learning time needed to make a difference. Perhaps five minutes of extra time a day won’t do much but two hours might. Three hours could be too exhausting and counterproductive. Adding five days might be worthless but 30 days could really help a student catch up.
Mental Health and Psychosocial Support
Given the new norm of physical distancing many of us have been struggling with issues regarding our state of mental wellness. Children exposed to the traumatic experiences of a pandemic can suffer severe psychological and social consequences. Unfortunately, there is no data in Jamaica for us to gauge the emotional impact the COVID19 pandemic continues to have on our students. This avenue of emotional scaffolding is clearly one in which the government through the Education Ministry can work to expand as we seek to have schools reopen face to face for the 2021/2022 academic year. Save the Children states psychosocial support helps maintain a continuum of family and community-based care and support during and after an emergency and prevents immediate or long-term mental health disorders. Psychosocial support involves a range of care and support interventions. It includes care and support offered by caregivers, family members, friends, neighbours, teachers, health workers, and community members on a daily basis. It also extends and includes care and support offered by specialized psychological and social services.
According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) children often lack access to mental health and psychosocial support, with potentially devastating long-term effects. Anxiety, depression and other stress-related problems threaten their ability to grow up healthy and happy. Violence can have a lifelong toll on the emotional health, physical health and social development of a student. If exposed in early childhood, the experience can even hamper a child’s brain development. For the most part students at the early childhood level do not have ready access to mental health support. Guidance counselors are not attached to most schools at the Early Childhood Level. The student guidance counselor ratio is unacceptable even at the primary level. Students with a compromised emotional state cannot learn.
Disrupting Learning Poverty
For those of us without trust funds or the proverbial golden spoon a solid education was the only way guaranteed for upward social mobility. Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has eroded almost an entire generation of learning and as such we must do all that is possible to stem and recover this educational loss. A collaborative approach is needed to rectify the learning gaps experienced by so many of our students. Minister Fayval Williams in her sectoral presentation to Parliament mentioned plans to introduce an extra lesson programme to be financed by the State. This programme will positively impact all students regardless of their socio-economic background. According to a World Bank report, following the massive school closures, as of February 2021, about 120 million school-age children had already lost or were at risk of losing a full academic year of face-to-face education, with serious educational impacts, according to the report, ‘Acting now to protect the human capital of our children: The costs of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the education sector in Latin America and the Caribbean’. According to the World Bank report, learning poverty, defined as the percentage of 10-year-olds unable to read and understand a simple text, may have grown by more than 20 per cent from 51 per cent to 62.5 per cent. This could be equivalent to roughly 7.6 million additional “learning poor” primary education school-age children in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Alternative Approaches to Normal
Undoubtedly, our students have suffered immense learning loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The online modality was offline for a significant number of Jamaican students. Education Minister Fayval Williams recently disclosed that schools have had no contact with approximately 120,000 students over the past year, due to the pandemic, despite the deployment of mixed modalities to deliver lessons. “They are not engaged online, they’re not watching lessons on TV, they are not listening to the radio, they are not opening their books. They are not in contact with their schools,” she told a virtual post-Cabinet press briefing. In a recent radio interview, Education Minister, Fayval Williams reported that approximately 61,000 students have joined the National Summer School Programme at the end of the first week. The numbers regarding students participating in the National Summer School Programme are very encouraging as of the end of the first week. Students enrolled in the National Summer School Programme are engaged in both face-to-face and online modalities. The 2021/2022 academic year should not be business as per usual. All stakeholders must join forces at arriving at workable solutions which will re-engage so many of our students who have not had much if any educational engagement in over a year. Sacrifices must be made for the good of the Jamaican State. One can only imagine that our already high crime rate will worsen if we do not stop the hemorrhaging regarding educational losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps now is the time for us to interrogate the one size fits all approach to standardized tests. It is critical that policy makers are flexible in ensuring that the curriculum is responsive to and in alignment with the needs of the society. Now is perhaps the time to ensure that the society work towards having a curated curriculum where students are met on their level. It is only by ensuring we take this holistic approach that we will foster and develop among our students a long standing love of learning. In many circles the notion of returning to normal is often spoken about. However, the coronavirus pandemic has showed us that there are alternative approaches to normal. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended classrooms and learning spaces. The impact of COVID-19 has fallen unevenly on the nation’s children and has exposed and reinforced the learning disparities among the social classes in the society. The time to re-shape education in a post-pandemic world is now. There is no comparison to being in a classroom. In the words of Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy-Secretary-General, we are facing a human crisis unlike any we have experienced and our social fabric and cohesion is under stress.
Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues.
waykam@yahoo.com
@WayneCamo
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