essay on effects of covid 19 on education sector

Coronavirus and schools: Reflections on education one year into the pandemic

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @daphnabassok lauren bauer , lauren bauer fellow - economic studies , associate director - the hamilton project @laurenlbauer stephanie riegg cellini , stephanie riegg cellini nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani michael hansen , michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies @drmikehansen douglas n. harris , douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university @douglasharris99 brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @bradolsen_dc richard v. reeves , richard v. reeves president - american institute for boys and men @richardvreeves jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies @jonvalant kenneth k. wong kenneth k. wong nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

March 12, 2021

• 11 min read

One year ago, the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. Reacting to the virus, schools at every level were sent scrambling. Institutions across the world switched to virtual learning, with teachers, students, and local leaders quickly adapting to an entirely new way of life. A year later, schools are beginning to reopen, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill has been passed, and a sense of normalcy seems to finally be in view; in President Joe Biden’s speech last night, he spoke of “finding light in the darkness.” But it’s safe to say that COVID-19 will end up changing education forever, casting a critical light on everything from equity issues to ed tech to school financing.

Below, Brookings experts examine how the pandemic upended the education landscape in the past year, what it’s taught us about schooling, and where we go from here.

In the United States, we tend to focus on the educating roles of public schools, largely ignoring the ways in which schools provide free and essential care for children while their parents work. When COVID-19 shuttered in-person schooling, it eliminated this subsidized child care for many families. It created intense stress for working parents, especially for mothers who left the workforce at a high rate.

The pandemic also highlighted the arbitrary distinction we make between the care and education of elementary school children and children aged 0 to 5 . Despite parents having the same need for care, and children learning more in those earliest years than at any other point, public investments in early care and education are woefully insufficient. The child-care sector was hit so incredibly hard by COVID-19. The recent passage of the American Rescue Plan is a meaningful but long-overdue investment, but much more than a one-time infusion of funds is needed. Hopefully, the pandemic represents a turning point in how we invest in the care and education of young children—and, in turn, in families and society.

Congressional reauthorization of Pandemic EBT for  this school year , its  extension  in the American Rescue Plan (including for summer months), and its place as a  central plank  in the Biden administration’s anti-hunger agenda is well-warranted and evidence based. But much more needs to be done to ramp up the program–even  today , six months after its reauthorization, about half of states do not have a USDA-approved implementation plan.

In contrast, enrollment is up in for-profit and online colleges. The research repeatedly finds weaker student outcomes for these types of institutions relative to community colleges, and many students who enroll in them will be left with more debt than they can reasonably repay. The pandemic and recession have created significant challenges for students, affecting college choices and enrollment decisions in the near future. Ultimately, these short-term choices can have long-term consequences for lifetime earnings and debt that could impact this generation of COVID-19-era college students for years to come.

Many U.S. educationalists are drawing on the “build back better” refrain and calling for the current crisis to be leveraged as a unique opportunity for educators, parents, and policymakers to fully reimagine education systems that are designed for the 21st rather than the 20th century, as we highlight in a recent Brookings report on education reform . An overwhelming body of evidence points to play as the best way to equip children with a broad set of flexible competencies and support their socioemotional development. A recent article in The Atlantic shared parent anecdotes of children playing games like “CoronaBall” and “Social-distance” tag, proving that play permeates children’s lives—even in a pandemic.

Tests play a critical role in our school system. Policymakers and the public rely on results to measure school performance and reveal whether all students are equally served. But testing has also attracted an inordinate share of criticism, alleging that test pressures undermine teacher autonomy and stress students. Much of this criticism will wither away with  different  formats. The current form of standardized testing—annual, paper-based, multiple-choice tests administered over the course of a week of school—is outdated. With widespread student access to computers (now possible due to the pandemic), states can test students more frequently, but in smaller time blocks that render the experience nearly invisible. Computer adaptive testing can match paper’s reliability and provides a shorter feedback loop to boot. No better time than the present to make this overdue change.

A third push for change will come from the outside in. COVID-19 has reminded us not only of how integral schools are, but how intertwined they are with the rest of society. This means that upcoming schooling changes will also be driven by the effects of COVID-19 on the world around us. In particular, parents will be working more from home, using the same online tools that students can use to learn remotely. This doesn’t mean a mass push for homeschooling, but it probably does mean that hybrid learning is here to stay.

I am hoping we will use this forced rupture in the fabric of schooling to jettison ineffective aspects of education, more fully embrace what we know works, and be bold enough to look for new solutions to the educational problems COVID-19 has illuminated.

There is already a large gender gap in education in the U.S., including in  high school graduation rates , and increasingly in college-going and college completion. While the pandemic appears to be hurting women more than men in the labor market, the opposite seems to be true in education.

Looking through a policy lens, though, I’m struck by the timing and what that timing might mean for the future of education. Before the pandemic, enthusiasm for the education reforms that had defined the last few decades—choice and accountability—had waned. It felt like a period between reform eras, with the era to come still very unclear. Then COVID-19 hit, and it coincided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and a wake-up call about the fragility of our democracy. I think it’s helped us all see how connected the work of schools is with so much else in American life.

We’re in a moment when our long-lasting challenges have been laid bare, new challenges have emerged, educators and parents are seeing and experimenting with things for the first time, and the political environment has changed (with, for example, a new administration and changing attitudes on federal spending). I still don’t know where K-12 education is headed, but there’s no doubt that a pivot is underway.

• First, state and local leaders must leverage commitment and shared goals on equitable learning opportunities to support student success for all.
• Second, align and use federal, state, and local resources to implement high-leverage strategies that have proven to accelerate learning for diverse learners and disrupt the correlation between zip code and academic outcomes.
• Third, student-centered priority will require transformative leadership to dismantle the one-size-fits-all delivery rule and institute incentive-based practices for strong performance at all levels.
• Fourth, the reconfigured system will need to activate public and parental engagement to strengthen its civic and social capacity.
• Finally, public education can no longer remain insulated from other policy sectors, especially public health, community development, and social work.

These efforts will strengthen the capacity and prepare our education system for the next crisis—whatever it may be.

Higher Education K-12 Education

Brookings Metro Economic Studies Global Economy and Development Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy Center for Universal Education

Modupe (Mo) Olateju, Grace Cannon

April 15, 2024

Phillip Levine

April 12, 2024

Hannah C. Kistler, Shaun M. Dougherty

April 9, 2024

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Up next for Supreme Court on abortion: Idaho

Historian sees a warning for today in post-Civil War U.S.

McCarthy says immigration, abortion, economy to top election issues

Rubén Rodriguez/Unsplash

Time to fix American education with race-for-space resolve

Harvard Staff Writer

Paul Reville says COVID-19 school closures have turned a spotlight on inequities and other shortcomings

This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring.

As former secretary of education for Massachusetts, Paul Reville is keenly aware of the financial and resource disparities between districts, schools, and individual students. The school closings due to coronavirus concerns have turned a spotlight on those problems and how they contribute to educational and income inequality in the nation. The Gazette talked to Reville, the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at Harvard Graduate School of Education , about the effects of the pandemic on schools and how the experience may inspire an overhaul of the American education system.

Paul Reville

GAZETTE: Schools around the country have closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Do these massive school closures have any precedent in the history of the United States?

REVILLE: We’ve certainly had school closures in particular jurisdictions after a natural disaster, like in New Orleans after the hurricane. But on this scale? No, certainly not in my lifetime. There were substantial closings in many places during the 1918 Spanish Flu, some as long as four months, but not as widespread as those we’re seeing today. We’re in uncharted territory.

GAZETTE: What lessons did school districts around the country learn from school closures in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and other similar school closings?

REVILLE:   I think the lessons we’ve learned are that it’s good [for school districts] to have a backup system, if they can afford it. I was talking recently with folks in a district in New Hampshire where, because of all the snow days they have in the wintertime, they had already developed a backup online learning system. That made the transition, in this period of school closure, a relatively easy one for them to undertake. They moved seamlessly to online instruction.

Most of our big systems don’t have this sort of backup. Now, however, we’re not only going to have to construct a backup to get through this crisis, but we’re going to have to develop new, permanent systems, redesigned to meet the needs which have been so glaringly exposed in this crisis. For example, we have always had large gaps in students’ learning opportunities after school, weekends, and in the summer. Disadvantaged students suffer the consequences of those gaps more than affluent children, who typically have lots of opportunities to fill in those gaps. I’m hoping that we can learn some things through this crisis about online delivery of not only instruction, but an array of opportunities for learning and support. In this way, we can make the most of the crisis to help redesign better systems of education and child development.

GAZETTE: Is that one of the silver linings of this public health crisis?

REVILLE: In politics we say, “Never lose the opportunity of a crisis.” And in this situation, we don’t simply want to frantically struggle to restore the status quo because the status quo wasn’t operating at an effective level and certainly wasn’t serving all of our children fairly. There are things we can learn in the messiness of adapting through this crisis, which has revealed profound disparities in children’s access to support and opportunities. We should be asking: How do we make our school, education, and child-development systems more individually responsive to the needs of our students? Why not construct a system that meets children where they are and gives them what they need inside and outside of school in order to be successful? Let’s take this opportunity to end the “one size fits all” factory model of education.

GAZETTE: How seriously are students going to be set back by not having formal instruction for at least two months, if not more?

“The best that can come of this is a new paradigm shift in terms of the way in which we look at education, because children’s well-being and success depend on more than just schooling,” Paul Reville said of the current situation. “We need to look holistically, at the entirety of children’s lives.”

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

REVILLE: The first thing to consider is that it’s going to be a variable effect. We tend to regard our school systems uniformly, but actually schools are widely different in their operations and impact on children, just as our students themselves are very different from one another. Children come from very different backgrounds and have very different resources, opportunities, and support outside of school. Now that their entire learning lives, as well as their actual physical lives, are outside of school, those differences and disparities come into vivid view. Some students will be fine during this crisis because they’ll have high-quality learning opportunities, whether it’s formal schooling or informal homeschooling of some kind coupled with various enrichment opportunities. Conversely, other students won’t have access to anything of quality, and as a result will be at an enormous disadvantage. Generally speaking, the most economically challenged in our society will be the most vulnerable in this crisis, and the most advantaged are most likely to survive it without losing too much ground.

GAZETTE: Schools in Massachusetts are closed until May 4. Some people are saying they should remain closed through the end of the school year. What’s your take on this?

REVILLE: That should be a medically based judgment call that will be best made several weeks from now. If there’s evidence to suggest that students and teachers can safely return to school, then I’d say by all means. However, that seems unlikely.

GAZETTE: The digital divide between students has become apparent as schools have increasingly turned to online instruction. What can school systems do to address that gap?

REVILLE: Arguably, this is something that schools should have been doing a long time ago, opening up the whole frontier of out-of-school learning by virtue of making sure that all students have access to the technology and the internet they need in order to be connected in out-of-school hours. Students in certain school districts don’t have those affordances right now because often the school districts don’t have the budget to do this, but federal, state, and local taxpayers are starting to see the imperative for coming together to meet this need.

Twenty-first century learning absolutely requires technology and internet. We can’t leave this to chance or the accident of birth. All of our children should have the technology they need to learn outside of school. Some communities can take it for granted that their children will have such tools. Others who have been unable to afford to level the playing field are now finding ways to step up. Boston, for example, has bought 20,000 Chromebooks and is creating hotspots around the city where children and families can go to get internet access. That’s a great start but, in the long run, I think we can do better than that. At the same time, many communities still need help just to do what Boston has done for its students.

Communities and school districts are going to have to adapt to get students on a level playing field. Otherwise, many students will continue to be at a huge disadvantage. We can see this playing out now as our lower-income and more heterogeneous school districts struggle over whether to proceed with online instruction when not everyone can access it. Shutting down should not be an option. We have to find some middle ground, and that means the state and local school districts are going to have to act urgently and nimbly to fill in the gaps in technology and internet access.

GAZETTE : What can parents can do to help with the homeschooling of their children in the current crisis?

“In this situation, we don’t simply want to frantically struggle to restore the status quo because the status quo wasn’t operating at an effective level and certainly wasn’t serving all of our children fairly.”

More like this

The collective effort

Notes from the new normal

‘If you remain mostly upright, you are doing it well enough’

REVILLE: School districts can be helpful by giving parents guidance about how to constructively use this time. The default in our education system is now homeschooling. Virtually all parents are doing some form of homeschooling, whether they want to or not. And the question is: What resources, support, or capacity do they have to do homeschooling effectively? A lot of parents are struggling with that.

And again, we have widely variable capacity in our families and school systems. Some families have parents home all day, while other parents have to go to work. Some school systems are doing online classes all day long, and the students are fully engaged and have lots of homework, and the parents don’t need to do much. In other cases, there is virtually nothing going on at the school level, and everything falls to the parents. In the meantime, lots of organizations are springing up, offering different kinds of resources such as handbooks and curriculum outlines, while many school systems are coming up with guidance documents to help parents create a positive learning environment in their homes by engaging children in challenging activities so they keep learning.

There are lots of creative things that can be done at home. But the challenge, of course, for parents is that they are contending with working from home, and in other cases, having to leave home to do their jobs. We have to be aware that families are facing myriad challenges right now. If we’re not careful, we risk overloading families. We have to strike a balance between what children need and what families can do, and how you maintain some kind of work-life balance in the home environment. Finally, we must recognize the equity issues in the forced overreliance on homeschooling so that we avoid further disadvantaging the already disadvantaged.

GAZETTE: What has been the biggest surprise for you thus far?

REVILLE: One that’s most striking to me is that because schools are closed, parents and the general public have become more aware than at any time in my memory of the inequities in children’s lives outside of school. Suddenly we see front-page coverage about food deficits, inadequate access to health and mental health, problems with housing stability, and access to educational technology and internet. Those of us in education know these problems have existed forever. What has happened is like a giant tidal wave that came and sucked the water off the ocean floor, revealing all these uncomfortable realities that had been beneath the water from time immemorial. This newfound public awareness of pervasive inequities, I hope, will create a sense of urgency in the public domain. We need to correct for these inequities in order for education to realize its ambitious goals. We need to redesign our systems of child development and education. The most obvious place to start for schools is working on equitable access to educational technology as a way to close the digital-learning gap.

GAZETTE: You’ve talked about some concrete changes that should be considered to level the playing field. But should we be thinking broadly about education in some new way?

REVILLE: The best that can come of this is a new paradigm shift in terms of the way in which we look at education, because children’s well-being and success depend on more than just schooling. We need to look holistically, at the entirety of children’s lives. In order for children to come to school ready to learn, they need a wide array of essential supports and opportunities outside of school. And we haven’t done a very good job of providing these. These education prerequisites go far beyond the purview of school systems, but rather are the responsibility of communities and society at large. In order to learn, children need equal access to health care, food, clean water, stable housing, and out-of-school enrichment opportunities, to name just a few preconditions. We have to reconceptualize the whole job of child development and education, and construct systems that meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful.

Within this coronavirus crisis there is an opportunity to reshape American education. The only precedent in our field was when the Sputnik went up in 1957, and suddenly, Americans became very worried that their educational system wasn’t competitive with that of the Soviet Union. We felt vulnerable, like our defenses were down, like a nation at risk. And we decided to dramatically boost the involvement of the federal government in schooling and to increase and improve our scientific curriculum. We decided to look at education as an important factor in human capital development in this country. Again, in 1983, the report “Nation at Risk” warned of a similar risk: Our education system wasn’t up to the demands of a high-skills/high-knowledge economy.

We tried with our education reforms to build a 21st-century education system, but the results of that movement have been modest. We are still a nation at risk. We need another paradigm shift, where we look at our goals and aspirations for education, which are summed up in phrases like “No Child Left Behind,” “Every Student Succeeds,” and “All Means All,” and figure out how to build a system that has the capacity to deliver on that promise of equity and excellence in education for all of our students, and all means all. We’ve got that opportunity now. I hope we don’t fail to take advantage of it in a misguided rush to restore the status quo.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Share this article

You might like.

Justices to hear case on near-complete ban amid shifting legal landscape after overturn of Roe

Past is present at Warren Center symposium featuring scholars from Harvard, Emory, UConn, and University of Cambridge

Former House speaker also says Trump would likely win if election were held today in wide-ranging talk

Harvard announces return to required testing

Leading researchers cite strong evidence that testing expands opportunity

For all the other Willie Jacks

‘Reservation Dogs’ star Paulina Alexis offers behind-the-scenes glimpse of hit show, details value of Native representation

When will patients see personalized cancer vaccines?

Sooner than you may think, says researcher who recently won Sjöberg Prize for pioneering work in field

Here's how COVID-19 affected education – and how we can get children’s learning back on track

Nearly 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person schooling between 2020 and 2022. Image:  Unsplash/Taylor Flowe

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Douglas Broom

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Global Health is affecting economies, industries and global issues

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, global health.

Listen to the article

• As well as its health impacts, COVID-19 had a huge effect on the education of children – but the full scale is only just starting to emerge.
• As pandemic lockdowns continue to shut schools, it’s clear the most vulnerable have suffered the most.
• Recovering the months of lost education must be a priority for all nations.

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic on 11 March 2020, few could have foreseen the catastrophic effects the virus would have on the education of the world’s children.

During the first 12 months of the pandemic, lockdowns led to 1.5 billion students in 188 countries being unable to attend school in person, causing lasting effects on the education of an entire generation .

As an OECD report into the effects of school closures in 2021 put it: “Few groups are less vulnerable to the coronavirus than school children, but few groups have been more affected by the policy responses to contain the virus.”

Although many school closures were announced as temporary measures, these shutdowns persisted throughout 2020 – and even beyond in some cases.

As late as March 2022, UNICEF reported that 23 countries, home to around 405 million schoolchildren, had not yet fully reopened their schools . As China battled to contain new COVID-19 outbreaks, schools were closed in Shanghai and Xian in October 2022.

COVID has ended education for some

Nearly 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person schooling between 2020 and 2022, UNICEF says. And it warns that many, especially the most vulnerable, are at risk of dropping out of education altogether.

The danger is highlighted by UNICEF data showing that 43% of students did not return when schools in Liberia reopened in December 2020. The number of out-of-school children in South Africa tripled from 250,000 to 750,000 between March 2020 and July 2021, UNICEF adds.

When schools in Uganda reopened after being closed for two years, almost one in ten children were missing from classrooms. And in Malawi, the dropout rate among girls in secondary education increased by 48% between 2020 and 2021.

Out-of-school children are among the most vulnerable and marginalized children in society, says UNICEF. They are the least likely to be able to read, write or do basic maths, and when not in school they are at risk of exploitation and a lifetime of poverty and deprivation, it says.

Lost learning time

Even when children are in school, the amount of learning time they have lost to the pandemic is compounding what UNICEF describes as “a desperately poor level of learning” in 32 low-income countries it has studied.

“In the countries analyzed, the current pace of learning is so slow that it would take seven years for most schoolchildren to learn foundational reading skills that should have been grasped in two years, and 11 years to learn foundational numeracy skills,” the charity says.

Analysis of the crisis by UNESCO, published in November 2022, found that the most vulnerable learners have been hardest hit by the lack of schooling. It added that progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for Education had been set back.

In Latin America and the Caribbean – a region that suffered one of the longest periods of school closures – average primary education scores in reading and maths could have slipped back to a level last seen 10 years ago , the World Bank says.

Four out of five sixth graders may not be able to adequately understand and interpret a text of moderate length, the bank says. As a result, these students are likely to earn 12% less over their lifetime than if their education had not been curtailed by the pandemic, it estimates.

Widening the achievement gap

In India, the pandemic has widened the gaps in learning outcomes among schoolchildren with those from disenfranchised and vulnerable families falling furthest behind, according to a 2022 report by the World Economic Forum.

Even where schools tried to keep teaching using remote learning, the socio-economic divide was perpetuated. In the United States, a study found children’s achievement in maths fell by 50% more in less well-off areas , compared to those in more affluent neighbourhoods.

One year on: we look back at how the Forum’s networks have navigated the global response to COVID-19.

Using a multistakeholder approach, the Forum and its partners through its COVID Action Platform have provided countless solutions to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, protecting lives and livelihoods.

Throughout 2020, along with launching its COVID Action Platform , the Forum and its Partners launched more than 40 initiatives in response to the pandemic.

The work continues. As one example, the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs is supporting 90,000 social entrepreneurs, with an impact on 1.4 billion people, working to serve the needs of excluded, marginalized and vulnerable groups in more than 190 countries.

Read more about the COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, our support of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), and the COVAX initiative and innovative approaches to solve the pandemic, like our Common Trust Network – aiming to help roll out a “digital passport” in our Impact Story .

Consultancy firm McKinsey says that US students were on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the 2020-21 school year. Disadvantaged students were hit hardest, with Black students losing six months of learning on average.

Researchers in Japan found a similar pattern, with disadvantaged children and the youngest suffering most from school closures. They said the adverse effects of being forced to study at home lasted longest for those with poorest living conditions .

However, in Sweden, where schools stayed open during the pandemic, there was no decline in reading comprehension scores among children from all socio-economic groups, leading researchers to conclude that the shock of the pandemic alone did not affect students’ performance.

Getting learning back on track

So what can be done to help the pandemic generation to recover their lost learning ?

The World Bank outlines 10 actions countries can take, including getting schools to assess students’ learning loss and monitor their progress once they are back at school.

Catch-up education and measures to ensure that children don’t drop out of school will be essential, it says. These could include changing the school calendar, and amending the curriculum to focus on foundational skills.

There’s also a need to enhance learning opportunities at home, such as by distributing books and digital devices if possible. Supporting parents in this role is also critical, the bank says.

Teachers will also need extra help to avoid burnout, the bank notes. It highlights a “need to invest aggressively in teachers’ professional development and use technology to enhance their work”.

Have you read?

Covid-19 has hit children hard. here's how schools can help, how the education sector should respond to covid-19, according to these leading experts, covid created an education crisis that has pushed millions of children into ‘learning poverty’ -report, don't miss any update on this topic.

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:

The agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} weekly.

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Global Health .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

Promoting healthy habit formation is key to improving public health. Here's why

Adrian Gore

April 15, 2024

What's 'biophilic design' and how can it benefit neurodivergent people?

Fatemeh Aminpour, Ilan Katz and Jennifer Skattebol

Kidney disease ‘should be global health priority’, plus other top health stories

Shyam Bishen

April 10, 2024

A new ‘diverse health database’ has already uncovered millions of new genetic variants. Here’s how it could help create health equity

Victoria Masterson

How fintech in LMICs can inspire the digital healthcare revolution

Luqman Lawal, MD, MPH and MBA

April 8, 2024

UNESCO’s education response to COVID-19

After the historic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, most schools are back open worldwide but education is still in recovery assessing the damage done and lessons learned. The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth with the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest. Some gains already made towards the goals of the 2030 Education Agenda were lost. 

From the outset UNESCO's Education Sector worked with ministries of education, public and private partners and civil society to ensure continued learning for all children and youth. The Sector's work is now focused on prioritizing education as a public good for everyone in order to avoid a generational catastrophe and drive sustainable recovery. 

Key in its initiatives was the establishment of the  Global Education Coalition , a new model for international cooperation which develops innovative responses to help countries cope with the after effects of the crisis. It counts more than 175 members working around three central themes: gender, connectivity and teachers. 

GLOBAL RESPONSE

UNESCO's Education Sector worked with ministries of education, public and private partners and civil society to ensure continued learning for all children and youth.

High-level ministerial meetings

creating a space for policy dialogue on education recovery to leave no learner behind: 

• 29 March 2021: One year into COVID: Prioritizing education recovery to avoid a generational catastrophe  
• 20-22 October 2020: Global Education Meeting extraordinary session  
• 20 March 2020:   With one in five learners kept out of school, UNESCO mobilizes education ministers to face the COVID-19 crisis  

Global Education Coalition

The   Global Education Coalition  has brought together more than  175 members  from the UN, private sector, civil society and academia to support countries in scaling up their best distance learning practices and reaching children and youth who are most at risk. 

Global monitoring through interactive maps

Interactive maps were developed   to follow the evolution of school closures and learning loss across the world as well as the prioritization of teachers for vaccination: 

• Global school closures and the number of learners affected ( data ) and duration of school closures per country . View methodology here .
• Prioritization of teachers in national COVID-19 vaccination roll-out  

Two campaigns were launched by UNESCO with members of the Global Education Coalition to ensure continuity of learning and that girls remain in school. 

• Keeping girls in the picture  
• Learning never stops  

Ideas and views

A round up of think pieces , articles and blogs on UNESCO's education response to COVID-19 and other issues.  

Webinars and workshops

Webinars  and workshops  were organized to share information about country efforts to maintain the provision of inclusive education in different contexts. 

Issue notes

Issue notes  were published to provide evidence of good practices, practical tips and links to important reference to mitigate the short and longer-term impact of school closures. 

Online learning tools

• A selection of digital learning resources   to support governments, schools, teachers, parents reaching out to learners unable to attend to school. 
• A repository of   national learning platforms   to support the continuity of curriculum-based study 
• Building back equal: girls back to school guide  
• Evidence on the gendered impacts of extended school closures: a systematic review  
• Framework for reopening schools  
• Global guidance on reopening early childhood education settings  
• Supplement to Framework for reopening schools: emerging lessons from country experiences in managing the process of reopening schools  
• Supporting teachers in back-to-school efforts: guidance for policy-makers  
• The state of the global education crisis: a path to recovery  
• What’s next? Lessons on education recovery: findings from a survey of ministries of education amid the COVID-19 pandemic  
• When schools shut: gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures  
• Where are we on education recovery?  

Surveys were launched to analyze the impact of and response to school closures. 

• UNESCO on national education responses  
• UNESCO Chairs on higher education   
• UNESCO-ILO global survey on staff development and training in the context of COVID-19 pandemic  
• First iteration  
• Second iteration  
• Regional UNESCO-UNICEF survey on early children education workforce in Asia and the Pacific   

Regional responses

Dedicated pages present responses proposed at regional level: 

Africa 

• Socio-economic and cultural impacts of COVID-19 on Africa: what responses from UNESCO?   

Arab States 

• Alternative solutions to school closures in Arab countries to ensure that learning never stops  
• Motivating and supporting children during remote learning: tips for teachers and parents  

 Asia Pacific

• COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response in Asia-Pacific  

Latin America and the Caribbean 

• Responding to COVID-19: Education in Latin America and the Caribbean  
• Distance learning and training strategies – Latin America and the Caribbean Region

Related items

The Impact of COVID-19 on Education – Recommendations and Opportunities for Ukraine

Robin Donnelly, Harry A. Patrinos, James Gresham

School closures due to COVID-19 have brought significant disruptions to education across Europe . Emerging evidence from some of the region’s highest-income countries indicate that the pandemic is giving rise to learning losses and increases in inequality. To reduce and reverse the long-term negative effects, Ukraine and other less-affluent lower-middle-income countries, which are likely to be even harder hit, need to implement learning recovery programs, protect educational budgets, and prepare for future shocks by “building back better.”

At the peak of the pandemic, 45 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region closed their schools , affecting 185 million students . Given the abruptness of the situation, teachers and administrations were unprepared for this transition and were forced to build emergency remote learning systems almost immediately.

One of the limitations of emergency remote learning is the lack of personal interaction between teacher and student . With broadcasts, this is simply not possible. However, several countries showed initiative by using other methods to improve the remote educational experience, including social media, email, telephone, and even the post office.

Ukraine also implemented measures to support remote teaching and learning , starting with broadcasting video lessons via television and using online distance learning platforms. Organizations like EdCamp Ukraine organized online professional development and peer-to-peer learning opportunities for teachers to meet remotely and share experiences with online learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Ukraine also conducted information campaigns, such as “Schools, We Are Ready,” together with UNICEF, to inform teachers, administrators, students, and parents about the guidelines for safe and sustained learning under COVID-19 in the 2020–21 school year.

Unfortunately, despite best efforts to set up a supportive remote learning experience, evidence is emerging to show that school closures have resulted in actual learning loss es . Research analyzing these outcomes is ongoing, but early results from Belgium , the Netherlands , Switzerland,  and the United Kingdom indicate both learning losses and increases in inequality. Alarmingly, these losses are found to be much higher among students whose parents have less education, a finding reinforced by a study showing that children from socioeconomically advantaged families have received more parental support with their studies during the school closure period.

These emerging data, which provide insights into the region’s highest-income countries, can also be used to predict outcomes in middle-income countries. Despite their substantial technological capability, even Europe’s high-income countries have experienced learning losses and increased inequality as a result of the abrupt transition to virtual learning. These outcomes are likely to be even more acute in middle- and lower-income countries like Ukraine, where there is much less technological capability and a larger share of families live below the poverty line.

Outside the classroom, learning losses may translate into even greater long-term challenges. It has long been known that decreases in test scores are associated with future declines in  employment . Conversely, increases in student  achievement  lead to significant increases in future income, as do additional years  of schooling, which are associated with an  8–9 percent  gain in lifetime earnings. In the absence of any intervention, the learning losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to have a long-term compounding negative effect on many children’s future well-being. These learning losses could translate into less access to higher education, lower labor market participation, and  lower future earnings .

To mitigate these challenges while also building a more resilient system that can withstand future crises, we make three core recommendations for Ukraine and other countries: implementing learning recovery programs, protecting education budgets, and preparing for future shocks.

1.     Implement learning recovery programs. Most immediately, governments must ensure that students who have fallen behind receive the support that they need to catch up to expected learning targets. The first step must be to carry out just-in-time assessments to identify these students and their support needs. Research  has shown that 12-week programs of  tutoring  can help students make the kind of progress that would be expected from three to five months of normal  schooling . In  Italy , middle school students who received three hours of online tutoring a week via a computer, tablet, or smartphone saw a 4.7 percent boost in their performance in math, English, and Italian.

Ukraine is implementing learning continuity programs, including through the establishment of the All-Ukrainian Online School platform for distance and blended learning for students in grades 5–11. The project, organized by Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science (MOES) and Ministry of Digital Transformation, helps teachers and students to remain connected, gain access to educational materials, and continue schooling during the period of enhanced quarantine measures when schools are closed. The platform contains lessons in 18 basic subjects and consists of videos, tests, and a compendium of lessons. Students also have the opportunity to track their learning progress. Even so, studies confirm that limited internet connectivity and access to devices for online learning (especially in rural areas), compounded by inadequate public support for distance learning, poses challenges. In addition to learning continuity programs, Ukraine could consider supporting ”just-in-time” student assessments to measure the extent of learning losses and identify the students who have fallen behind and may need additional targeted support to catch up.  Accelerated learning or tutoring programs could help address the learning gap.  

2.     Protect the education budget . Given the significant financial strain that economies have been under during the pandemic, some countries may face government budget cuts that could jeopardize the gains that have been made in recent years in terms of access to education and improved learning  outcomes . To ensure a resilient recovery, it is essential that the education budget be protected and that the schools that need financing the most are supported. To help the most vulnerable students, governments should prioritize by directing much of the funding and resources to support schools delivering remote instruction, particularly if those schools are serving high-poverty and high-minority populations . To encourage students to remain in school, incentives  such as scholarships may need to be implemented. Yet learning recovery programs will not be feasible without substantial financial support. In the presence of budget cuts, affluent families will be able to continue to fund educational boosts like tutoring; however, lower-income families will not as easily be able to fill this gap. For example, the  United Kingdom  announced a £1 billion pupil catch-up fund that contained a portion set aside for tutoring and the National Tutoring Programme with a £76 million budget. Clearly, significant budget allocations and further actions will be needed to return to previous  levels of learning.

Ukraine has taken steps to protect and shore up education spending in 2021 by increasing transfers to local governments for teaching aids and equipment, providing further support and social protection to teachers and academic staff through salary increases, and implementing a new transfer to local governments for school safety and other measures aimed at combating COVID-19. Looking ahead, Ukraine will want to closely monitor overall funding levels for education to ensure that funds are being used efficiently and that resources are available to support learning recovery interventions, particularly for those students who most need them.   

3.     Prepare for future shocks by building back better.  It is imperative that we not only recover from the pandemic but that we use this experience to become better prepared for future crises. To support this aim, countries need to build their capacity to provide blended models of education in the future. Schools should be better prepared to switch easily between face-to-face and remote learning as needed. This will protect the education of students not only during future pandemics, but also during other shocks that might cause school closures, such as natural disasters or adverse weather events. It will also create opportunities for more individualized approaches to teaching and learning. With this in mind, it will be necessary to develop flexible curricula that can be taught in person or online. Additionally, teachers need to be better equipped to manage a wide range of IT devices in the event of future school closures. Offering short training courses to improve their digital skills will help. Using the post-pandemic period to rebuild education systems and make them resilient is a priority. At the same time, it is important to build a future education system that can make better use of blended learning models to reach all learners at their level and to provide more individualized approaches to teaching.

Although this is a long-term process, Ukraine is already taking steps in this area. The authorities have developed regulations for distance education, and efforts are ongoing to continue to expand the number of schools with internet connectivity and access to digital devices and equipment to allow for greater use of blended learning approaches in schools going forward. Even so, “building back better” requires bold action and a vision for the kind of human capital Ukraine will need to grow and thrive in the future. It is critical to continue the larger education reform process that was started initially in 2014, including both the New Ukrainian School (NUS) initiative in school education and the reform of higher education in line with the standards of the European Higher Education Area. Ukraine’s MOES is preparing a project with the World Bank to support learning continuity and operational resilience in higher education through initiatives to expand digitalization in the education sector. These efforts will help higher education institutions to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 while also adapting to more resilient and flexible approaches going forward.

Interview originally published by Dzerkalo Tyzhnia in the Mirror Weekly

Content Search

The impact of covid-19 on education systems in the commonwealth.

• Commonwealth

Attachments

New education study offers strategies to fill COVID learning gaps

Report urges governments to build resilient education systems to ensure sustained learning for all

A new education study has identified strategies governments can use to address the disruptions and learning gaps created by school closures and other responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Produced by the Commonwealth Secretariat and South Africa-based JET Education Services, the report urges governments to build more resilient education systems that can withstand future crises and ensure continuity of educational provision and access to education services, especially for marginalised populations.

The publication, The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Systems in the Commonwealth report (PDF) , which is a collation of eleven research papers, drew on the experience and expertise of several researchers and established experts to provide insight into early interventions and mitigation strategies.

It comprehensively examines the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic and identifies priority issues for governments and policymakers to focus on in order to address the possible negative impact on students, particularly those in low-income countries, rural and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Inequalities intensified during lockdown

Using research from a selection of Commonwealth countries, one key finding that was repeatedly highlighted in the report is that of the delivery of education and access to quality education. The report found that these and other existing educational inequalities were further exacerbated by national lockdowns finding communities that were already disadvantaged and excluded from adequate resources and support before the pandemic in a far much worse situation, leading to the reduction of learning opportunities and school performance.

Data also suggests that being out of school was likely to mean a cessation of learning for girls, who become further engaged in domestic responsibilities, placing them at risk of academic failure and reinforcing community beliefs that educating boys is more important than girls.

And as educational institutions resorted to emergency remote teaching to ensure continuity in the teaching and learning process, this further led to exclusions for marginalised populations who could not afford technology and those living in remote areas where internet connectivity is still a problem.

Urgent action needed to support recovery and transform education post-COVID

To mitigate the challenges brought about by the pandemic, the report suggests, among others:

• the need to rethink the curriculum or design an alternative model that can be activated when remote teaching is needed
• solutions such as developing and distributing structured school workbooks
• adjusting the school calendar to maximise teaching time following lockdown
• re-enrolment of marginalised learners as being of great importance, especially for girls who are at the highest risk of dropping out
• provision of supportive environments to enable children to focus on learning, highlighting that parents and teachers have a critical role to play in this, especially those in underserved areas
• further investment is warranted in technologies capable of delivering education remotely

International Day of Education

The release of the publication coincides with the International Day of Education which will be observed on 24th January 2022 under the theme, Changing Course, Transforming Education, putting the spotlight under the gaping inequalities that the pandemic has placed before us and how to build a stronger and sustainable education system to safeguard the futures for this generation and those to come.

Dr Amina Osman, Education Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat and one of the authors of the report, said:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought education systems across the world, especially in low-income countries, to a standstill. Millions of students across the world, particularly those from poorer and marginalised backgrounds, are at risk of even further educational exclusion unless urgent action is taken to curb the impact of COVID-19. So, as we mark the International Day of Education, it is clear now more than ever that urgent action needs to be taken by governments and policymakers to respond to the current crisis and support its recovery by building more equitable and resilient education systems to ensure sustained learning for all continues, whether online, in person or hybrid.”

She added, “I hope the recommendations contained within this report will serve as a benchmark to shape future policies to allow students to achieve their full potential. To this end, The Secretariat will continue to work with member countries, stakeholders, and partners, as part of its commitment to advancing Sustainable Development Goal 4 and strengthening education systems and policies across the Commonwealth.”

The paper was produced in partnership with JET Education Services , an education development body based in South Africa, and is the second in a series looking at the impact of the pandemic on education services .

The results of this research paper will feed into individual Commonwealth countries’ decision-making processes.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Education Systems in the Commonwealth report (PDF)

Related Content

World + 14 more

Policy Brief on the Security Council’s Consideration of the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (2019 - 2023)

2024 regional human development report: a complex landscape of progress and challenges - pacific island countries, project 21: monitoring regional de protection (afrique centrale et de l'ouest) - questionnaire informateur clé - contexte pdi (fevrier 2024, version 3.1), project 21: monitoring regional de protection (afrique centrale et de l'ouest) - questionnaire ménage - contexte pdi (fevrier 2024, version 3.1).

Beyond the bus: Five key challenges in US student transportation

Every day, the US student transportation system takes more than 24 million K–12 students to and from school. 1 “Table 236.90. Students transported at public expense and current expenditures for transportation: Selected years, 1929-30 through 2018-19,” National Center for Education Statistics, January 2022. That’s nearly half of all students in US public schools.

There’s no question this is an essential service. US student transportation serves as a vital tool for districts tackling chronic absenteeism (defined as missing 15 or more days in a school year). 2 “Chronic absenteeism in the nation’s schools,” US Department of Education, updated January 2019. A major barrier to student engagement, chronic absenteeism affects 14.7 million students from diverse backgrounds and has doubled overall since the COVID-19 pandemic. 3 Population breakdown of students experiencing chronic absenteeism: White (5.2 million students), followed by Latino (5.0 million) and Black (2.9 million), with smaller but proportionally more elevated rates of absence with Pacific Islander and Native American students in addition to large numbers of students with disabilities (2.7 million) and English learners (1.9 million). See “All hands on deck: Today’s chronic absenteeism requires a comprehensive district response and strategy,” Attendance Works, November 17, 2023; Emma Dorn, Bryan Hancock, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Ellen Viruleg, “COVID-19 and education: An emerging K-shaped recovery,” McKinsey, December 14, 2021.

But it’s also a service with challenges. In recent years, districts have struggled to improve student experience and safety, navigate driver shortages, optimize operations, attain net-zero-emission targets, and meet the complex transportation requirements of high-need students. Addressing these issues requires consistent investment from school systems.

This article digs into these challenges and offers examples of innovative solutions that could help districts make the most of their investments in transportation. Strategic insights from innovative technologies and partnerships could help district leaders, state and federal agencies, and student transportation providers navigate these challenges more effectively in the coming decade.

To read the full article, download the PDF here .

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning

Advancing racial equity in US pre-K–12 education

Stimulus funding deadlines loom: How are K–12 schools adjusting their priorities?

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Impact of COVID-19: a particular focus on Indian education system

Pushpa gothwal.

1 Amity School of Enginnering and Technology, Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur, India

Bosky Dharmendra Sharma

2 Mayoor Private School, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Nandita Chaube

3 Gujarat Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar, India

Nadeem Luqman

4 Ansal University, New Delhi, India

The COVID-19 pandemic has stirred up the world, and its overwhelming impacts can be seen from micro to macro level, that is, from an individual’s day-to-day functioning to the broader level—health sector, finance sector, and off course, the education sector. The younger generation is considered to be the torchbearer of the society. As such, their nutrition, health, safety, and providing education for a holistic development being basic essential needs should be a prime concern for policymakers and all nations worldwide. The present theoretical framework sheds light on the negative as well as the positive impact of COVID-19 on education. It presents a critical analysis of how the education sector experienced a shift from contact teaching to digital learning and got a boost through various online platforms despite having its limitations at the same time including the multidimensional impact of uncertainty and difficulties in sustaining. The chapter also emphasizes the effects of home confinements on students and teachers as well. In this way, the present chapter puts forth the pros and cons of online teaching including various other related aspects.

12.1. Introduction

The word COVID was first discovered in Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto in 1963. Since then, various mutations were found in different parts of the world, but COVID-19, which was discovered toward the end of 2019, will be written in the history of 2020. The history indicates such incidences every 100 years. Various types of flu infections such as plague (1720), cholera (1817), Spanish flu (1918), and corona virus (2019) have been declared as pandemics. The diagonals of impact or the crater created due to the situation are major concerns today.

The novel corona virus (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. It is established that this virus influences the aged persons more ( Zhou et al., 2020 ); however, this view was countered ( Bhatnagar et al., 2020 ) and few others have done descriptive and mathematical analysis of COVID spread and made few predictions upon it which are to be observed ( Harjule et al., 2020 , Kumari et al., 2020 , Singh et al., 2020 ). It has globally impacted many sectors like small and large scale businesses, the world economy, health sector, transportation, wages, industries, education, etc. It is evident by the news reports and other reliable sources that this pandemic has majorly brought adverse consequences. However, it is evident that during the global lockdown, a lot of curricular activities, including regular courses, webinars, faculty development programs, lectures, training, and certification programs, have much flourished when it comes to the education sector. Where this online facility has made education easier and comfortable, it has its limitations also. Here, we have emphasized the impact of COVID-19 on the education sector. As per the UNESCO report, the worldwide lockdown has affected over 91% of the world’s student population ( UNESCO, 2019 ). This estimation predicts that the corona virus will adversely impact over 290 million students across 22 countries. The same report estimates that about 32 crore students are affected in India, including those in schools and colleges.

In this chapter we discuss the impact of COVID-19 with a particular focus on education. This chapter is organized as follows: Section 12.1 is introduction; Section 12.2 throws light on impact of COVID-19 on education, which has two subsections—effect of home confinement on children and teachers, and a multidimensional impact of uncertainty. Section 12.3 describes sustaining the education industry during COVID-19 and conclusions are mentioned in the last section.

12.2. Impact of COVID-19 on education

During this pandemic education sector has experienced gross changes such as a shift from regular contact classes to online platforms, modified teaching pedagogy adopted by teachers, conduction of examinations and competitive exams etc. As per the UNESCO report in the education sector, 1,190,287,189 learners have been affected and 150 countrywide closures ( UNESCO, 2019 ). The effect of COVID-19 on the education and mental health of students and academic staff has been explored in the studies ( Cao et al., 2020 , Sahu, 2020 ). It presents some challenges due to COVID-19 on education. First, to protect the traditional teaching system, which is entirely shifted to online teaching, which requires teachers’ training, strong technical support, and high-speed internet, which is not accessible for everyone. Second, the assessment and evaluation system using an online platform does not provide student performance accuracy because the originality of performance cannot be assured ( Ruder, 2019 ). The students may use some other device to take help while answering the questions asked during the assessment. The third is the research platform, including international travel, cancellation, and postponing conferences and seminars. Other research activities have adversely affected the work ( Hutton, Dudley, Horowitz-Kraus, DeWitt, & Holland, 2020 ). However, many such events have shifted to online platforms based on the possibilities, which has increased the participation and popularity of these events ( Cao et al., 2020 ). The fourth concern is student mental health and career, which is grossly affected due to this outbreak ( Sahu, 2020 ).

Studies have been conducted where the impact of COVID-19 on physicians’ education was to be assessed for which they conducted seminars based on self-regulation theory and found significant results ( Clark et al., 1998 , Ferrel and Ryan, 2020 ). Ferral and Ahmad discussed the pandemic’s impact due to which some hospitals in the United Kingdom canceled students’ internship and observations ( Ahmed et al., 2020 , Ferrel and Ryan, 2020 ). This was reassured by another study, which concluded that, as a preventive measure, many hospitals are not permitting students in hospitals, which is adversely influencing their education ( Burgess & Sievertsen, 2020 ).

Edgar discussed the effects of COVID-19 on higher secondary education and the impact of using Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics education. In this study, the authors collected data through the telephonic mode from public school teachers, where they found a significant drop in these students’ academic performance ( Iyer, Aziz, & Ojcius, 2020 ).

COVID-19 has brought the entire education methods from traditional to online modes. There are various online platforms available for learners and professionals. The students can work with peace of mind while staying at their homes where their time, energy, and money are not wasted traveling. They are not fatigued and hence can invest themselves more in comparison to preCOVID conditions. Studying at home has also provided a more significant benefit to the students being directly monitored by parents. When it comes to theory classes, the online platform has given them a vast chance to excel. However, the practical assignments that the students are supposed to conduct in laboratories and fields have seen a major constraint. This has created a significant limitation of teaching for teachers when they cannot provide the demonstrations to the students in the absence of laboratory instruments and other necessary practical materials.

However, this has led to the timely completion of courses despite the complete lockdown but with incomplete knowledge among students whose courses are more practical. Therefore a combination of these pros and cons has brought the education world to a different level.

Several online platforms are available for lectures, training etc., which have made learning easier ( Bambakidis & Tomei, 2020 ). However, in the absence of contact teaching, a one-to-one discussion between a teacher and students is adversely influenced. The chances of filling this lacuna are also not assured because the students will probably be deprived of contact learning before being promoted to the next level. This again leads to next level difficulties that these students may face shortly soon due to unclear concepts of previous standards/grades ( Sintema, 2020 ). Also, in the absence of a formal class environment, the student’s concentration is more likely to be adversely influenced.

Where the online facility has provided the ease of learning through flexi classes, there is no surety that the student himself or herself is attending the class. Due to network troubles, sometimes the teacher and students face many disturbances. Students sometimes get involved in mischievous activities by making fake email IDs, making noises, or giving unnecessary comments etc. The teacher faces difficulty maintaining discipline. However, this online mode is more appropriate for some disciplines than direct contact teachings, such as web designing, etc., where the practical demonstration can be better understood through online presentation and screen sharing options.

On the other hand, students from the low socio-economic class are getting no chance to experience online learning. This creates a huge and unfair social stratification where learners are left deprived of their legitimate right to education. In developing countries like India, where a huge population belongs to rural backgrounds, people are not so technology friendly. This is another challenge for the Indian education system despite the availability of technological facilities. This difficulty is faced by either or both teacher and student. Teachers who are more apt and comfortable in contact teaching cannot give their 100% through online lectures. A very advantageous and constructive aspect that emerged during the lockdown is that many professionals started throwing free online courses, training programs, workshops, webinars, etc., which have given a good chance to all the learners to update their credentials at no expense. People having busy official schedules who are usually not able to invest time in such programs are now getting a chance to upgrade themselves. On the other hand, young professionals are getting a fair chance to present themselves with more confidence.

When it comes to the physiological and cognitive effects, online education has both advantages and disadvantages. Recently, a study was conducted at Harvard Medical School on digital devices’ interference in sleep and creativity. It was found that the use of digital media plays a significant role in making the neural connection for a growing human brain. However, the screen usage of more than the recommended hours can lead to lower brain development. This also leads to the disruption of sleep by undersecretion of the melatonin hormone.

Another major concern is the availability of study resources. Not all the study material is available through online mode. Several offline materials are usually available in the library but not in the online database. A student is being deprived of this material. Furthermore, the educational institutions, which have decided to conduct online examinations, face difficulty in preparing question papers. The question papers are mostly multiple choices that do not give the student a window to write descriptive answers, which are equally crucial for a student to learn. This improves the writing skills of the student.

Where the online conduct of classes and conducting examinations has its challenges, the evaluation, on the other hand, has become more convenient and transparent between the teacher and student, where the students come to know about their performance. There are platforms that allow the faculty to give online assignments and evaluation. Online teaching does not require a large infrastructure for the conduct of classes. Instead, a strong IT team is sufficient to make it workable. In direct contact teaching, the other teaching and stationary materials are required, in the absence of which teaching is likely to suffer. The online teaching platform has covered up this drawback of direct contact teaching. However, online teaching makes people more digitally dependent by reducing direct and one-to-one social interaction. This is gradually making people more technology addicts.

12.2.1. Effect of home confinement on children and teachers

Due to the COVID-19 crisis (in more than 150 countries), all levels of the education system, from preschool to tertiary education, have been affected ( Bjorklund and Salvanes, 2011 , Vahid, 2020 ), wherein gradual closure of schools and universities took place. Similar situations prevailed in the past as well, during the pandemics ( Klaiman, Kraemer, & Stoto, 2011 ). Being confined to home or lockdown has impacted lives and livelihood across different spheres and so the education sector too, though have been able to meet the demands ensuring that via “online learning,” “homeschooling,” “virtual learning,” or “E-learning” children’s educational attainment remains undisrupted mainly ( IAU, 2020 ).

At the tertiary level, almost all universities and colleges have offered online courses and switched to virtual lectures, classes, and webinars ( Strielkowski, 2020 ), since digital learning has emerged as a significant aid for education from just an extracurricular facility. Although the contingencies of digital technologies rendition go past a stop-gap solution during the crisis, it has helped answer a new set of questions entirely about what, how, where, and when students shall learn. With the help of technology, students and teachers can ingress resource materials and not limit just to the text books in different formats, styles at their own pace and time by just going online. Besides teachers, smart digital technologies do not just teach only. Instead, it simultaneously observes, monitors how we study, how we learn, what interests us, the tasks that we involve in, the kind of problems that we face and find difficult to solve and adapt accordingly to meet the needs of the learner with more accuracy, specifications as compared to traditional learning within classrooms ( Kumar, 2020 ).

However, the necessary measures taken are highly applaudable; there are various issues that arise due to prolonged school closures and home confinement ( Cao et al., 2020 ) impacting students’ well-being in COVID time wherein students feel physically less active, sleep irregularities, dietary changes marked by weight gain along with low motivation ( Wickens, 2011 ), boredom to getting more anxious, and irritable as well. Abundant research has been carried out, suggesting having adverse effects on physical and psychological health in school-going children and students pursuing higher education at colleges and universities ( Liu et al., 2019 ). Nevertheless, at the tertiary level, the closing of campuses left them with no choice to leave hostels and dormitories and return to their hometown; however, many got stuck too, leaving them helpless and anxious ( Grubic, Badovinac, & Johri, 2020 ).

The switch to online education ensures minimum loss of studies suffered, and progress and attainment are also closely monitored via timely assessment and evaluations. Internal learning evaluation and assessments are considered to have high significance as it demonstrates the students’ learning needs and support for taking remedial actions ( Pandit, 2020 ). However, having been shifted to online platforms and accessed remotely, a major concern that emerged was the availability of proper internet facility networks and technology, especially in lower socio-economic zones and strata. In many countries, via online portals, TV and radio channels were started and the concern was addressed by the respective governments ( Gyamerah, 2020 ).

Imparting of average grade points based on the course completion for students pursuing higher studies, deferring the exams till further notice, promotion to the next level using “predictive grade,” were announced by few higher education institutions and schools. As per Gonzalez et al. (2020) and Black and Wiliam (2018) , the evaluation method and assessment would also change from traditional high stake to small project-based and activity, assignment-based evaluation shortly as the pandemic continues. At higher education institutes, there is a hold on the ongoing research projects and field works. A virtual internship is provided and various scientific research conferences and symposiums have been postponed and canceled ( Viner et al., 2020 ). They have moved online, whereby these virtual conferences have adversely affected networking opportunities and informal communication, creating a wide gap, especially in case of the inequalities prevailed in accessing technology to educational resources and the absence of proper remedial measures ( Gjoshi & Kume, 2014 ).

It is perceived that higher education can be relatively managed with digital learning or remote schooling ( Srivastava, 2020 ). As such, most of the research carried out to study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on education discusses the adverse effects in terms of learning and student well-being ( Herold, 2017 ) due to home confinement and digital learning or homeschooling taking place with parental issues and concerns to provide childcare management and guidance required for their distance learning programs, availability of resources, and their socio-economic conditions ( Hiremath, Kowshik, Manjunath, & Shettar, 2020 ).

Despite the ongoing conditions prevailing due to COVID-19, online learning has said to have long-term positive implications that can be expected in comparison to the earlier research studies that suggested that student well-being is affected by the quality of learning ( Mahboob, 2020 ). A recent study sheds light on the significant positive impact of COVID-19 on learning efficiency and performances by adopting online learning strategies. To better understand the teaching and learning process during this crisis, it is imperative to have an education reform made to provide necessary teacher training, making further advancement of the new normal digital learning for functioning smoothly in the future as well ( Stephens, Leevore, Coryell, & Pena, 2017 ).

Furthermore, according to WHO, COVID-19 may never be gone. Instead, people have to learn to live with it. As such, by the policymakers, distance learning is embedded in normal education, so as to help students learn coping skills to deal effectively, minimizing negative impacts in case of crises encountered.

However, as a need of the hour, education shall increasingly embrace online/virtual classrooms, keeping in mind the exposure to students’ screen time in a day, planning of activities wherein parental involvement, assistance, and guidance are considered ( India Today, 2020 ). More physical education, music, dance, home gardening along with art integration should be focussed so as to enhance creativity, and affective domains that advertently shall enhance motivation, physical activities ( Sprang & Silman, 2013 ) and in adolescence too, continuous sitting, eye strains ( Levy & Ramim, 2017 ) and issues like cyber bullying, video game addictions and social media browsing can be put under control. Even for university students, through distance learning, they can collaborate with others, watch lectures prerecorded, and have fruitful discussions. The lecturer can be more of a facilitator rather than an instructor. Distance learning can be as effective as a traditional face-to-face mode of learning. Students have more family time; they can engage at their own pace ( Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino, 2019 ).

Moreover, there are barriers to distance learning and are unique to every country. However, its use has worldwide benefits that can be counted on, especially educating, imparting training on various focussed topics to general hobbies ( Bell et al., 2017 ). For educators, having been faced with so many challenges to adjust and get accustomed to the distance learning platform, it is highly commendable to have done so effectively. Still, they find it convincing, and a feel-good factor also persists, as work from home has helped manage home, take care of one’s self and family as mostly the time is spent on daily commuting, travels to reach the workplace, endless department meetings, colloquia or ongoing discussions on one side, and on the contrary, the research evidence ( Goodman, Joshi, Nasim, & Tyler, 2015 ) demonstrated that parents with a low socio-economic background faced difficulties in providing nutritional meals to their children due to school closures, and also the affordability of extra-school activities compared to more advantaged backgrounds.

Nevertheless, to minimize the challenges experienced due to home confinement and school closures, distance learning should be encouraged. Need for updating with modern technology should be introduced with high-speed internet, continuous power supply, cyber security, as well as proper training to educators and students so as to have skills and competencies to operate electronic devices, along with the necessary knowledge and understanding about the method in which the information is imparted.

Clearly, due to our recent experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, many conventional academic life principles have to be reshaped. However, a common goal is being shared by all the education systems, which is to overcome the learning crisis faced and deal effectively with the COVID-19 pandemic.

While talking about the family environment, it has been observed that many faculties are reporting about online teaching difficulties. Especially in children’s cases, it is reported that the families are not cooperating to maintain the class’s decorum. The family members keep disturbing the child for one or the other reason, which promotes the child to continue with disturbing and inattentive behavior. The cognitive skills of the parents also have a significant role in understanding and growth of the child. If the academic and the other assignments are better understood by the parents, the children will have a constant source of support whenever needed without any delay or waiting time for the next interaction with the teacher. In this aspect, India is facing much difficulty because a large population is illiterate or less educated to compliment the contemporary educational demands of their children. Hence, the family has a central role in the learning of the child ( Moon, Kim, & Moon, 2016 ).

12.2.2. A multidimensional impact of uncertainty

The diagonals of impact or the crater that is created due to the situation is a matter of major concern today. If we see the situation and scenario, we will find that this pandemic problem is not just medical or psychological. However, it encompasses a three-dimensional area, that is the bio-psycho-social domain of health psychology, which explains an interconnection between biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors. This model plays an important role in defining interaction between humans and the environment and puts light on humans’ interaction with their social environment in which we operate within certain domains and norms. When these domains are affected by environmental factors, a lethal combination takes birth. The world is facing the same evidence in the form of various psychological and socio-environmental outcomes, such as financial, mental health, environmental, etc. None of the areas are untouched by the pandemic influences. In the current chapter, the impacts of COVID-19 on education are explained in detail.

Suppose we see the present scenario when uncertainty is prevailing in every sector of society. In that case, it will not be superlative to say that the students of today, despite having their completed degrees, will have a certain and stable career. Such situations are making the students prone to rumination , which means that they are most likely to think about their uncertain future. In the present context, it is in terms of examination outcome and job security. This thought process is likely to affect their overall psyche and, in turn, will lead to a greater rise in major psychological problems.

12.3. Sustaining the education industry during COVID-19

This pandemic situation generates many education losses like postponing the board exams, competitive exams, government exams, schools and colleges closed, etc. To overcome or minimize these losses, the Human Resource Development (HRD) minister released the guideline to all educational institutes to utilize the online platforms for teaching purposes ( Di Pietro, Biagi, Costa, Karpiński, & Mazza, 2020 ). Here, the most popular open-source of online teaching platforms are MS Team, Moodle, Zoom App, Chamilo, Webex, Canvas, Forms, Google Hangouts, and Google Meet. These platforms have helped teachers in online lecture delivery, sharing of notes, assessment, quiz conduction, etc. Several e-learning platforms are also available for students, which offer free certification or audit of the courses. These sources are Coursera, NPTEL, Swayam, edX, WHO, Harvard University, Stanford University, MITs, IITs, NITs, and many more. Therefore, in this situation, students learn at their own pace using digital platforms, while protecting themselves from the corona virus. Hence, the impact of COVID-19 on the education sector is compensated by online teaching platforms ( UNESCO, 2020 ). This online platform also provides teachers and students with various opportunities to interact with experts as per their area of interest without any expenses. Such teaching facilitates students’ effective utilization of time and more online learning activities based on their preferences.

The entire chapter can be summarized in the table mentioned below:

12.4. Conclusion

The pandemic situation has adversely affected several sectors, but the education sector has had both advantages and disadvantages. The virus outbreak has negatively influenced other areas; the education sector has been able to sustain and has shown its advantages. Especially when we talk about digital education, it has proved to be a savior of the entire education system. However, it cannot be avoided that this digitalization has come up with its limitations. It has its pros and cons, such as home confinement, blocked socialization etc. Hence, in this epidemic situation, the fulfilment of course requirements is majorly satisfied. However, the quality of learning and outcome is adversely affected in some teaching areas, which further opens the door to more advanced education reformed by policymakers and government. Therefore, a futuristic approach to implementing such an education system needs much planning to provide a better learning platform. However, to get better results, online teaching techniques and traditional pedagogy may produce highly productive results. Therefore it can be concluded that despite having limitations, this COVID-19 pandemic has got a boost through various online platforms.

• Ahmed, H., Allaf, M., & Elghazaly, H. (2020). COVID-19 and medical education. The Lancet Infectious Diseases . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Bambakidis N.C., Tomei K.L. Impact of COVID-19 on neurosurgery resident training and education. Journal of Neurosurgery. 2020; 1 (aop):1–2. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bell S., Douce C., Caeiro S., Teixeira A., Martín-Aranda R., Otto D. Sustainability and distance learning: A diverse European experience? Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. 2017; 32 (2):95–102. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bhatnagar V., Poonia R.C., Nagar P., Kumar S., Singh V., Raja L., Dass P. Descriptive analysis of COVID-19 patients in the context of India. Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics. 2020:1–16. doi: 10.1080/09720502.2020.1761635. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bjorklund, A. & K. Salvanes (2011). Education and family background: Mechanisms and olicies. In E. Hanushek, S. Machin, & L. Woessmann (Eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education , Vol. 3.
• Black P., Wiliam P. Classroom assessment and pedagogy. Assessment in education: Principles. Policy & Practice. 2018; 25 (6):551–575. [ Google Scholar ]
• Burgess, S. & Sievertsen, H.H. (2020). Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education. VoxEu.org, 1.
• Cao W., Fang Z., Hou G., Han M., Xu X., Dong J., Zheng J. The psychological impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on college students in China. Psychiatry Research. 2020; 287 doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112934. Article 112984. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Clark N.M., Gong M., Schork M.A., Evans D., Roloff D., Hurwitz M., Mellins R.B. Impact of education for physicians on patient outcomes. Pediatrics. 1998; 101 (5):831–836. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Di Pietro, G., Biagi, F., Costa, P., Karpiński Z., & Mazza, J. (2020). The likely impact of COVID-19 on education: Reflections based on the existing literature and recent international datasets, JRC Technical Reports. Available at: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC121071 .
• Ferrel, M.N., & Ryan, J.J. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on medical education. Cureus. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Gjoshi R., Kume K. Research on the administrator professional training and its role in the implementation of educational institutions reforms in Kosovo. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research and Development. 2014; 1 :26–30. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gonzalez, T., de la Rubia, M.A., Hincz, K.P., Comas-Lopez, M., Subirats, L., Fort, S., & Sacha, G.M. (2020). Influence of COVID-19 confinement in students’ performance in higher education. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Goodman, A., Joshi, H., Nasim, B., & Tyler, C. (2015). Social and emotional skills in childhood and their long-term effects on adult life. https://www.eif.org.uk/report/social-and-emotional-skills-in-childhood-and-their-longterm-effects-on-adult-life .
• Grubic N., Badovinac S., Johri A.M. Student mental health in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: A call for further research and immediate solutions. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 2020; 66 (5):517–518. doi: 10.1177/0020764020925108. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gyamerah, K. (2020). The impacts of COVID-19 on basic education: How can Ghana respond, cope, and plan for recovery ? https://schoolofeducation.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2020/03/31/the-impacts-of-covid-19-on-basic-education-how-can-ghana-respond-cope-and-plan-for-recovery Accessed 01.04.20.
• Harjule P., Kumar A., Agarwal B., Poonia R.C. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (PAUC) Springer; 2020. Mathematical modeling and analysis of COVID-19 spread in India. [ Google Scholar ]
• Herold B. (2017). Technology in education: An overview. https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/technology-in-education/ .
• Hiremath P., Kowshik C.S.S., Manjunath M., Shettar M. COVID 19: Impact of lockdown on mental health and tips to overcome. Asian Journal of Psychiatry. 2020; 51 :102088. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102088. 2 pages. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hutton J.S., Dudley J., Horowitz-Kraus T., DeWitt T., Holland S.K. Associations between screen-based media use and brain white matter integrity in preschool-aged children. JAMA Pediatrics. 2020; 174 (1):e193869. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.3869. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• IAU (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on higher education worldwide. Resources for Higher Education Institutions . International Association of Universities. Retrieved from: https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/covid-19_and_he_resources.pdf .
• India Today (2020). Effect of Covid-19 on campus: Major steps being taken by Colleges to keep education going . https://www.indiatoday.in/educationtoday/featurephilia/story/effect-of-covid-19-on-campus-steps-taken-by-colleges1668156-2020-04-17 .
• Iyer P., Aziz K., Ojcius D.M. Impact of COVID-19 on dental education in the United States. Journal of Dental Education. 2020; 84 (6):718–722. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Klaiman T., Kraemer J.D., Stoto M.A. Variability in school closure decisions in response to 2009 H1N1: A qualitative systems improvement analysis. BMC Public Health. 2011; 11 :73. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-11-73. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kumar, D.N.S. (2020). Impact of Covid-19 on higher education . Higher Education Digest. https://www.highereducationdigest.com/impact-of-covid-19-on-higher-education .
• Kumari R., Kumar S., Poonia R.C., Singh V., Raja L., Bhatnagar V., Agarwal P. Big Data Mining and Analytics. IEEE; 2020. Analysis and predictions of spread, recovery, and death caused by COVID-19 in India. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Levy, Y. & Ramim, M.M. (2017). The e-learning skills gap study: Initial results of skills desired for persistence and success in online engineering and computing courses. In Proceeding of the Chais 2017 Conference on Innovative and Learning Technologies Research (pp. 57–68).
• Liu C.H., Stevens C., Wong S.H., Yasui M., Chen J.A. The prevalence and predictors of mental health diagnoses and suicide among US college students: Implications for addressing disparities in service use. Depression and anxiety. 2019; 36 (1):8–17. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mahboob, A. (2020). Education in the time of COVID-19. Available at: http://www.flcgroup.net/courses/education101-intro/ .
• Moon J.H., Kim K.W., Moon N.J. Smartphone use is a risk factor for paediatric dry eye disease according to region and age: A case control study. BMC Ophthalmology. 2016; 16 (1):188. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pandit, S. (2020). Sankatma nirantar sikai . Gorkhaparta (May 07). Available at: https://gorkhapatraonline.com/education/2020-05-06-13805 .
• Ruder, D.B. (2019). Retrieved from https://hms.harvard.edu/news/screen-time-brain on June 16, 2010.
• Sahu P. Closure of universities due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Impact on education and mental health of students and academic staff. Cureus. 2020; 12 (4) [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonson M., Zvacek S.M., Smaldino S. Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education 7th Edition. IAP; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Singh V., Poonia R.C., Kumar S., Dass P., Agarwal P., Bhatnagar V., Raja L. Prediction of COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic based on time series data using support vector machine. Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences & Cryptography. 2020 doi: 10.1080/09720529.2020.1784525. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sintema E.J. Effect of COVID-19 on the performance of grade 12 students: Implications for STEM education. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education. 2020; 16 (7):1851. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sprang G., Silman M. Posttraumatic stress disorder in parents and youth after health-related disasters. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 2013; 7 :105–110. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2013.22. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Srivastava, P. (2020) COVID-19 and the global education emergency . https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/covid-19-and-the-global-education-emergency Accessed 18.03.20.
• Stephens, D., Leevore, M., Coryell, D., & Pena, C. (2017). Adult education-related graduate degrees: Insights on the challenges and benefits of online programming .
• Strielkowski, W. (2020), COVID-19 pandemic and the digital revolution in academia and higher education . Preprints 2020, 2020040290, 10.20944/preprints202004.0290.v1. [ CrossRef ]
• UNESCO 2019, < https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse > Accessed 29.0520.
• UNESCO 2020, < https://en.unesco.org/news/covid-19-crisis-Sheds-light-need-new-education-model > Accessed 29.06.20.
• Vahid, F. (2020). A message from a professor to fellow professors and students about at-home learning during COVID-19 .
• Viner, R.M., Russell, S.J., Croker, H., Packer, J., Ward, J., Stansfield, C., & Booy, R. (2020). School closure and management practices during corona virus outbreaks including COVID-19: A rapid systematic review . The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Wickens C.M. In: Higher education: Teaching, internationalization and student issues. Poulsen M.E., editor. Nova Scotia Publishers; 2011. The academic and psychosocial impact of labor unions and strikes on university campuses; pp. 107–133. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhou F., Yu T., Du R., Fan G., Liu Y., Liu Z.…Cao B. Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult in patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: A retrospective cohort study. The Lancet. 2020; 395 (10229):1054–1062. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30566-3. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]