Covid-19, A Year in Review: The Effect on the Education Sector

Hindsight brings us back to 2020.

Winding the clocks back a year exactly, Britain went into national lockdown. This forced schools to go from banning phones during school hours, to them now becoming a necessity. This has been a challenge that the school community has faced head on and fully embraced throughout all of the phases of Covid-19. With the vaccine rollout, schools back into the classroom, and measures looking to be relaxed in the upcoming months, it brings up the question 'What next?'.

Coping: Key Intervention During 'Phase One':

This led to terms such as 'social distancing' and 'the new normal' becoming commonplace as schools moved to online learning, which allowed education to continue for all learners during the school closures.

Academic institutions and their leaders broke through barriers and pushed through the pre-conceived limits to digital-learning. They fully embraced mobile and online content/platforms for continuous learning and additional support with the likes of Google Classroom, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

Managing Continuity: Key Intervention During 'Phase Two':

This is the phase we are in now, as schools have been able to get students back into the classroom. This has been a massive benefit, not only for student's academic learning, but socially, mentally, and an overall benefit for the school community as a whole.

Organisations like the one I work for, Raising Foundation, as well as many others in the Education Sector have become innovative solutions to these problems and have staying power post-pandemic as part of the teacher's toolkit. This could be in a multitude of ways, ranging from an MIS to make administration tasks easier for school staff and improve parent communication/engagement, to virtual reality that offers a fresh and interactive way for students to consolidate their learning, without having to travel to the deep ocean or outer space (and just might inspire students to make those trips themselves!).

Improving and Accelerating: Key Intervention During 'Phase Three':

This brings me to my question at the beginning of the article, what next?

With hope on the horizon, it seems like remote learning may be a valid option for some schools to use. Things I have considered is the effect this may have on snow days where remote learning becomes the option (sorry, kids!). Or if some parents have thought over the option of home schooling their children, the resources in Ed Tech available to them now will continue to grow more than it already has.

This will be important for those of us who do work in the Ed Tech space to continually innovate and listen to what our audiences need. Raising Foundation are doing so with surveys to keep track of how features are being used and how to maximise the value they bring to academic institutions, but we all need to be proactive. We got into these careers to put student's learning first and if we can continue to embrace the positive outcomes of awful situations whenever they occur in the future, 'what next?' can be answered with 'we'll be ready for anything'.

This article was written by Elliot Sahadeo. Any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected].