2020 The Lost Year For Education - A Survey And Report By ASTI

 2020 has been an annus horriblis for everything including education of course. Like in many countries our school year is only for nine months. Last year we lost almost the entire school year. Our children have lost almost a full year of education.

Now the new 2021 school year has already begun and some students are back to school and they will have to catch up with their lessons again. 

Last year 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic forced schools to close and teach their lessons online.  The results of teaching online on such an emergency basis are only now being assessed. 

ASTI or the Association of Science Technology and Innovation which is run by our eminent education expert, the Cambridge educated Dr Mohamed Yunus Mohamed Yassin (above) has done a survey of 120 Tamil primary school teachers to gauge the effects of online teaching during the Covid19 pandemic.  You can download the 28 page illustrated report from: 

https://www.asti.org.my/recoveryprojects

I provided some assistance in writing this report. Here is a quick summary. 

2020: THE LOST YEAR FOR EDUCATION REPORT LAUNCHING

The Association of Science, Technology, and Innovation (ASTI) officially launches a report based on its survey on how online learning is impacting the lives and learning of young minds today.

This survey provides an insight as to why online learning in 2020 has not been effective, especially among vulnerable communities and B40 families in Malaysia. 

A total of 120 teachers, across eight states and Kuala Lumpur, participated in this survey that was conducted at the end of last year. 

Top on the list, among other issues related to social problems, is the lack of mobile devices and internet accessibility for students. 

ASTI initiated this survey for the benefit of understanding how we can all regroup and reboot the education platforms in 2021 from the teacher’s perspective. 

The first of which is to revise the previous school year’s syllabus in the first three months of 2021.  This move should include remedial classes for those who need them; and ensuring that adequate infrastructure for online learning is put in place for it to be effective.  

you can download the report from https://www.asti.org.my/recoveryprojects/. For further inquiry, email asti2510@gmail.com. 

My comments :

Among the surveys findings were that :

i.   82% of the students were from the B40 group

ii.  78% of teachers responded that online class were not effective

ii. The main reason was because 60% of students lacked the devices and gadgets and had to use their parents mobile phones. 

iv. 70% of teachers said that the effectiveness of online classes also depended on the online apps that were available, Whatsapp being most popular (70%) followed by Google Meet (50%). This point is relevant. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. 

v. 68% of the teachers said there was poor participation in online classes

vi. 92% of teachers said students not able to attend all online classes

vii. 68% said students could not complete their online homework

viii. On the teachers' side 57% of the teachers said they completed the year's syllabus. 43% could not.  This is not good at all. 

ix. An almost equal proportion of teachers said that maths, science and language were the hardest subjects to teach online.

x. 43% of teachers said their biggest challenge was the lack of face to face interaction with students

xi. Looking forward 84% of teachers say poor knowledge of the 2020 classes will impact students in the new 2021 school year.

xii. 63% of teachers responded that their students were also emotionally affected. Minus the teacher interface, minus the peer learning and peer experiences in a school environment and importing a classroom atmosphere into their homes via mobile phones etc has put much pressure on the children. 

xiii. To improve online learning 60% of the teachers suggested : more exercises using home based learning modules, written quizzes, simple projects, hands on activities, and worksheet modules.

20% of teachers suggested giving students free devices, laptops, internet connections. 

58% of teachers suggested that we monitor reading, writing and communications skills (especially for primary school students) and content knowledge.

21% of teachers suggest monitoring physical and emotional health of students.

xiv. For the new school year 2021 :

32% of teachers said that for the first three months repeat some lessons and undertake syllabus revision. 

28% of teachers said the schools should add extra classes, extra worksheets, student based learning modules, hands on modules, 21st century learning skills and assess the quality from time to time. 

46% of teachers want the government to spend funds and make available more resources on the above suggestions for 2021.

21% of teachers want the government to make available more handheld devices for students and improve their internet connectivity.

The teachers also responded to suggestions if NGOs (like ASTI) could help them.

43% of teachers wanted NGOs to help create  special programs at the school level, games, competitions, online quizzes, new online learning modules and other learning resources especially for Maths and Science.

To my knowledge ASTI is the first organisation to undertake a survey like this to help quickly gauge the effects of online classes and plot a course forward. And this is a survey of teachers who are the frontliners in the education system - the feedback is from the frontlines.

To their credit ASTI has undertaken this survey on their own, using their own extremely limited manpower and very little funds with the volunteer assistance of those 120 teachers.

To help address this lost year in education, ASTI has also gone beyond this initial survey and has already prepared a special science teaching module for primary school teachers whereby the teachers can teach primary school students a whole school year's worth of scientific concepts  in a THREE DAY workshop environment.  

The special module requires THREE EIGHT HOUR sessions for children and involves huge amounts of activity, hands on experiments, quizzes, many "prizes" (to keep the students motivated for three days) and games.  There will be more information forthcoming soon.  

This quite brilliant module can help the students catch up with what they have missed in 2020.  

The pandemic is unprecedented. The whole world is suffering. All over the world children have missed school. Few countries have been able to cope well with online education.  The government has the funds but the government may not have sufficient manpower and skills by itself to handle this new situation.

I think we should all pull together on this one.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.