Corona Daily 007: Unfinished Learning

Two months ago, I wrote about our fitness going down as a result of the shut gyms and swimming pools, as well as general reduction in exercise. In June, I rejoined the gym after a fifteen month gap. I am still unable to lift more than 75% of weights I could effortlessly lift before the pandemic.

Something similar has happened with the school students. Two USA reports published last week, one by McKinsey and another by an organization called NWEA show that the steepest drops have been in two subjects: Mathematics and reading.

On average, students fell five months behind in mathematics, and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year. Historically disadvantaged students lost even more. Students in America’s black-majority schools ended six months behind in Mathematics, low-income school students seven months.

McKenzie uses the term ‘unfinished learning’ to capture the pandemic fact that students didn’t get the opportunity to finish the learning they would have in a typical year. In many countries, students are promoted to the next grade with or without a reliable way of assessments. However, even imperfect education systems use building blocks, particularly for Mathematics and reading. How to continue with the construction of a skyscraper when two floors are missing in between? If younger students don’t spend enough time learning the alphabet and basic texts, can they start reading books just because they are promoted?

Other than the academic knowledge, children are at risk of finishing school without the skills, behaviours and mindsets to succeed in college or in the workforce.

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In the survey of 16,370 parents from across all the US states, 35% of parents said they were extremely anxious about their child’s mental health, and social and emotional well-being. Parents reported increases in clinical mental health conditions. There is a 5 percentage point increase in anxiety among children, and 6 percentage point increase in behaviors such as social withdrawal, self-isolation, lethargy and irrational fears.

Chronic absenteeism from grade 8 to 12 has gone up by 12 percentage points. 42% of students are not attending schools at all (when they should), according to their parents. In the US, before the pandemic, 3.1 million children were chronically absent from school. That number has now more than doubled.

Chronic absenteeism is the first step to dropping out of school. As per the McKenzie report, up to 1.2 million children could drop out altogether because of the pandemic. The report calculates the loss to them, and to American society. White students are likely to see their lifetime earnings reduced by 1.4%, the reduction for Black students could be 2.4% and for the Hispanic students 2.1%.

Lower earnings, lower level of education and the consequent reduction in innovation lead to decreased economic productivity. By 2040, all the school students of today, (kindergarten to grade 12) will be part of the workforce. The report expects the potential GDP loss of around $160 billion from pandemic related unfinished learning.

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At the bottom end, more than 1 million American children simply were not enrolled in local schools. They didn’t show up in person or online. Educators realized there is no substitute for quality, in-person kindergarten. Children begin to identify numbers and letters, the first building blocks. Kindergarten is a place where teachers can generally diagnose dyslexia, autism or the need for a child to wear glasses.

Both in the USA and UK, registrations for home education went up. In the UK, they rose by 75% in the eight months of the academic year. Covid anxiety has made parents remove children from the school register and switch to home-education officially. Not just kindergarten children, but older ones as well. Between September 2020 and April 2021, over 40,000 pupils were taken out of UK schools. Many parents admit they are “reluctant home educators”.

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Though this article gives a glimpse of the state of education in the USA and UK, the problems are universal. Predictably, they are more acute in Asia and Africa.

School re-opening for in-person learning is a critical potential action. When schools re-open, the teachers should focus on building the missing blocks, finish the unfinished learning.

Ravi