The Cambridge-ASEAN policy brief was being launched on Tuesday at an event hosted by British Expertise International in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam, represented by the Vietnam Embassy in London.
In 2021, ASEAN reported that Covid-related school closures affected the quality of education for more than 152 million children across its member states.
Separately, public opinion poll specialists Gallup estimated education satisfaction in Southeast Asia fell from 85% to 63% in the first year of the pandemic – the largest drop of a region worldwide.
Southeast Asia had been on top for education satisfaction.
"We must acknowledge the digital divide that exists in many countries in the region. In ensuring inclusiveness, we need to provide more equitable access to technologies and services for citizens and geographical locations that market often overlooks such as remote, rural and underserved areas," Dato Lim Jock Hoi, Secretary-General of ASEAN, said in a press release on Tuesday.
Not all countries experienced the same education challenges or experienced them to the same degree in the wake of Covid-19.
However, the ‘Recover Learning and Rebuild Education’ roundtable with ASEAN Ministers of Education on March 16 found significant common ground – including the varying definitions of learning loss and possibilities for ‘smarter’ curriculum compression.
The roundtable discussion is summarised in the Cambridge-ASEAN policy brief which provides the bases for recommendations which focus on learning loss, access, and resilience. They include:
- Nations must build on recent digital transformation to increase access to education. Though Southeast Asia made strong progress in increasing internet and device access and developing education technology over the past two years, there is still a long way to go.
- National learning loss solutions need to consider mental health and wellbeing of people in schools to ensure effective learning. Through the disruption to school life created by the pandemic, people have lost more than knowledge and skills.
- Governments and organisations should prioritise addressing learning loss for younger students, vulnerable students, and people on vocational pathways. School closures have had a more significant impact on these groups. Cambridge and ASEAN suggest governments need targeted approaches to offset this.
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