ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is among those South Asian countries where school closures have led to alarming inequities in learning opportunities for children, despite significant efforts by their governments and partners to expand remote learning, according to a new research conducted by Unicef.

The research conducted in Pakistan, India, the Maldives and Sri Lanka notes that school closures in South Asia due to the Covid-19 pandemic have interrupted the learning of 434 million children, Unicef says on Thursday.

In Pakistan 23 per cent of younger children didn’t have access to any device that could support remote learning. Poor and disadvantaged households have been the worst hit, with many families struggling to afford even a single device.

Even when devices are available, Unicef’s research indicates that they are often underutilised and that children’s access to them is often limited. For example, in Pakistan, among children with access to devices, only about 24 per cent could use them when they wanted to.

Study conducted in Pakistan, other countries finds pandemic to have interrupted education of 434m children

According to Unicef’s research, a substantial proportion of students and their parents reported that students learnt significantly less compared to pre-pandemic levels. Despite significant efforts from governments, low connectivity and access to digital devices have severely hampered efforts to roll out remote learning.

The research found that student-teacher engagement, when regular and reciprocal, is a strong predictor of success in children’s learning, especially for younger students. However, the surveys found that most students had little or no contact with their teachers after schools closed.

To ensure that children keep learning, Unicef has called on governments to prioritise the safe reopening of all schools, while also ensuring that children are able to pursue quality learning remotely if necessary; and teachers to assess children’s learning levels and ensure catch up is enabled through a “learning recovery” period.

Governments should prioritise the vaccination of teachers to support the safe reopening of schools, and train and equip teachers to better reach children and adolescents with limited or no access to technology through a combination of modalities, including mobile devices, TV, radio, and printed materials.

Governments and donors should protect and expand investments in education, including critical pre-primary and foundational literacy and numeracy, while private sector and civil society organisations to work with governments in improving connectivity and creating high-quality, multilingual remote learning content tailored to students’ needs.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2021