Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

During COVID-19, schools were forced to move to remote delivery of teaching. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) note that high levels of pre-existing inequalities (e.g. poverty) have exacerbated the negative impacts of the pandemic on children’s education. The World Bank report predicts that the “shock on human capital will substantially reduce intergenerational mobility and the likelihood of children from low educated families to complete secondary school”. The bank also presents a call to action to address the significant learning loss experienced by Latin American and Caribbean children. As countries are transitioning back to face-to-face or to more hybrid styles of education delivery, consider:

• Work in partnership with schools, community groups (e.g. parental committees) and local social care services to identify vulnerable children and develop targeted measures (e.g. through remedial programmes) to ensure that schools are teaching at an appropriate level for all children. Specifically take into account the learning needs of children from lower-income families who may not have had the resources at home to keep up with remote learning measures
  • For example, ‘Alerta Escuela’, Peru uses early warning systems to identify students who are at risk of dropping out or who are in need of targeted interventions
• Guide and support schools on how best to combine remote and in-person learning (e.g. the Ceibal initiative in Uruguay). To increase accessibility, blended learning recovery solutions should consider low- or no-tech options (e.g. educational TV programmes/local radio/community youth groups)
• Design a long-term transformational plan for accelerating the digital transformation of local and national Education Management and Information Systems (EMIS), for example:
  • The World Bank is collaborating with education agencies to establish a “new generation of EMIS based on an enterprise architecture focusing on learning data”. The programme will collate best practices, tools and guidance that aim to enable education agencies to implement technology-driven solutions that accelerate cost effective educational programmes and generate high investment returns

See also TMB Issue 33 – a case study which explores the “attainment gap” and digital divide, detailing international strategies that aim to support children to catch up on learning time lost during the pandemic

In Colombia, the Red Flags movement (vulnerable people hung red flags from their homes to signify a need for assistance e.g. food, finances) led to a rise in ad hoc voluntary contributions. Local government used this opportunity to develop an integrated system of relief. They:

• Created a single point of donation for all resources (human, in kind and financial), combining private and civil society donations to create a substantial, long-term resource
• Used big data including population age, location, data on links to existing social support to capture voluntary work undertaken, needs of individuals, and areas served
• Linked data and the centralised donation system to an economic committee comprised of local government, businesses, voluntary sector and charity sector to jointly decide allocation of finances to support voluntary organisations
• Developed a campaign for local businesses to 'adopt' a university student from one of the five city-owned universities - whereby the sector donated 2-3 semesters of student fees. The aim of the campaign was to support students' access to education to mitigate the long-term economic impacts of a lost generation of university graduates

This lesson was contributed by a Chief Resilience Officer in Colombia during project data collection.