Some are struggling, some may not, some probably just don’t care anymore.
It goes the same with the children, probably even worse – some are struggling, some are cozily enjoying their online classes and new routines, some just couldn’t be bothered anymore over learning. For sure, we are looking into the potential high number of learning loss among children.
Having to go through our Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin last week’s press on the school’s opening which was initially scheduled for tomorrow, all I can conclude is what the study mode would be depending on the mode of movement control issued to each of the states. For those that are on PKP mode, the mode of study would be PdPR (Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Di Rumah) and we will be given instructions, guided by school over time.
As much as flattening the curve should be the main priority during Covid19 crisis, it concerns me what is the government plan, in this case Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin’s plan for an inclusive reopening for school’s children.
Furthermore, not just the module that we need to be concerned about but also on the readiness of the children’s environment in dealing with distance learning tools introduced by the education ministry.
Education plays a vital role not just as a benchmark of a nation’s progress but is essential to drive the economic progress in future as well sustainable development. Hence, I believe that the government should not just stop at discussing the mode of the teaching during Covid19 alone, but should dig deeper on the gaps on various factors affecting the effectiveness of a distance learning tool.
There are few areas that need to be looked into and I would probably get slammed by some people that think “Hey, they are your kids and our country is struggling with health issues, so why don’t you play your role and just try to adapt, will ya?”
No, unfortunately, the role of the government does not stop at health concern alone nor economic perspective alone but it goes beyond that, and believe it or not, education is as equally important as other areas. For the disruption in education and learning today among our children will affect the progress of this nation in future. The lack and drawback in education will affect the extent of the innovation skills of our future generation as much as it will lead to a society crisis – this will create inequities in a longer term if not tackled swiftly. I will discuss that but I am sure some are already struggling today.
PdPR Learning Mode and Inequality
Yes, you got that right – inequality.
School is where every child can receive equal attention, equal digital and equipment resources, equal environment where the idea of no one should be left behind can be realized. Unfortunately, with Covid19 crisis, children are facing inequities because with school closures, the access to education is subjected to the socio economic background of their families.
It goes back to what I have mentioned earlier, the government’s role is to come up with policies that can help to navigate us towards the right recovery, make it for our health assurance, economy as well as access to education to be made available for all. Especially now during Covid 19’s crisis where every citizen is relying on the government to make the right move in time of needs.
And that goes to the current PdPR learning mode that requires children to go through online learning, learning from home where in this situation, parents from different socio-economic backgrounds may have different ability nor availability to support their children. Digital resources are important tools to assist children in PdPR learning. So it should be expected that for less privileged children, their parents may be lacking the digital infrastructure/equipment to support their kids - make it a computer or a tablet or even an internet access for an online learning class. And imagine how frustrating it would be for both parents and children knowing that they are struggling even just to start the whole “learning from home” program.
While for those coming from a solid financial background structure, it may not be an issue to provide the required digital support for their children in adapting to the new learning mode, what about the ones that are less privileged? With how Covid19 had caused many to lose their jobs, we should expect that we are seeing many households have been facing reduced incomes ever since. Hence, the gap on providing the digital resource to children should be expected to widen by now with more struggling parents coming into the list.
Definitely, the education ministry in introducing such learning mode should also consider that many household’s incomes in Malaysia rely on both working parents hence it is expected that working parents would have less time with their children and they definitely won’t be available during the scheduled online class to guide their children. To me, this is indeed a serious issue and the government should look into the struggle of working parents today, dealing with both work where their employers can terminate them anytime while at the same time dealing with their children’s education progress.
In the worst case, don't be surprised if there are parents that resort to choosing between putting food on the table over their children's education. Minister Mohd Radzi should realize that unlike secondary students, children in the primary stage of learning rely on adult’s guidance. Because unlike adults, children do not have the independent learning skills to make sure they can go through the learning process without proper guidance, as how it is in a physical class.
Talking over working parents, we need to acknowledge that Malaysia’s business culture is far from adapting the high income nation’s culture in the definition of working from home nor giving the flexibility between working and having a life. Face it, most of the employers hate the idea of “WFH”, and prefer their staff working at the office rather than at home. And not just that, constant reporting and follow ups have been ways for most of the companies in ensuring that staff are working full 8 hours instead of measuring through outputs or deliverables, results due to trust deficit issues.
So just imagine this, one single factor of financial support alone can bring us to various restrictions of access to education for the children depending on their socio-economic backgrounds if we are to rely solely on the current execution of PdPR.
Further to that, the government should also consider the environment inequality seen for those less privileged families where they only have small space that needs to be shared across other family members in making the PdPR mode learning able to serve its role to replace physical schooling nature. The entire learning process for children had switched from school where they can focus in a quiet environment to a cramped space that needs to be shared with other running toddlers.
As obvious as it is, depending on the parent’s working nature, or socio economic backgrounds of the family, we definitely should expect to see gaps in achievement and performance among children and as exaggerating as this sounds, to me, this is definitely a downright inequality in education if these struggling, underprivileged children are continued to be neglected for it will be long before we can kiss goodbye to Covid19.
While I see it will be a huge challenge in dealing with the nature of working parents and also the environment aspect of learning from a cramped house because it requires social policies adjustment. I believe the actions can be taken immediately to cater the needs for the digital resources - tablets, hardware to assist kids from home. The government needs to come with social policies for the people to ensure education can be equally accessed to children, and should not stop just at providing BPN, selective moratorium, selective KWSP withdrawal allowance but should also be extended to ensure every single child with a digital resource gap is given the same access to education.
If education needs to be accessed through online learning for an unknown period of time, the gap in digital resources should be identified and corrected without any further delay, for it can cause inequities in education access. Via a survey done in Sep 2020, the Education Minister had identified that as much as 36% out of 900,000 students do not have means of tablets, computer to help them learn via PdPR’s mode. Yet, from September 2020 till today, what has been done by far to close the gap?
We are talking about 36% of 324,000 students potentially facing learning loss due to gaps in digital resources. 324,000 that could potentially be a dropout if such an issue is not tackled swiftly and continues to be neglected. And taking the enrollment of Standard 1 this year, we are probably looking at a new number, probably higher.
As much as the education institutions need to reform via enhancing schools infrastructure to cater the need of PdPR, the children's accessibility at home should not be neglected. There are many options that the government could think of in closing the gap of lacking digital resource issues. As such, the government should consider opting for a cheaper solution that covers the basic needs of online learning such as a minimalist hardware like a Chromebook if allocation is a concern. A Chromebook has evolved since its first introduction since 2011. With new applications built in ready in Google like "Docs" and "Sheets", it should cover some basic essentials to support learning from home structure other than online classroom. Besides that it is a cheaper solution than a laptop or PC computer, it can help students to be able to access online class and at the same time act as motivation for the less-privileged children despite the other lacking that they are currently facing. A simple aide could change an entire perspective of a child.
Considering that we have gone through almost a year period of Covid 19 crisis, the government should have expected that successive closures and openings are likely to continue for the next 6 months or so. With the past year being a period of idleness in the learning curve for our children, it is important for the government to take the matters of digital resource gap as an important issue and start spending for these children without any further delay. How much more study needs to be done for us to realize that every child has rights to receive equal access to education?
Additionally, in adapting to the new norm, as much as digitalization is the way to go, I still believe that face to face interaction and worksheets are important and proven to be more effective especially for children that need more attention when it comes to learning. Some may think that worksheets can be accessed easily through phones, but again this is where the resources at home for different family backgrounds need to be considered. Many times, worksheets are given through Whatsapp or Telegram apps but I believe worksheets should be provided by the school institution itself to ensure everyone has access to every single item needed for them prior to doing home learning, because there are families that see printer as a luxury item.
Now what about the school itself? How prepared are the teachers, or how well equipped the teachers are today? And what are the efforts done or continuous improvement efforts initiated? Make it from the schools themselves to make a proposal for budget allocation in reaching students? As I had my first session of PdPR today, the first interesting “tip” shared by the teacher to parents is the availability of a gadget to accommodate PdPR mode of teaching.
So you see, I am sure the education schools themselves should realize by now since we have been through PKP 1.0 that there must be some children who do not have the privilege of having a gadget to support home based learning. Yet, it seems that people in the institution just assume that parents will eventually figure out ways to sort things out by giving the essentials of having a gadget for children as the first tip. Not that I would blame the teachers, after all they can only make do based on the readily available policies but the fact it comes to an enlightenment that the issue is just being bluntly ignored is outright wrong. It is indeed a sad situation. Who would be the best bridge from parents to the ministry, if it is not from the education institutions themselves - in this case, the school?
At this stage, where the crisis has impacted us all in so many forms, I believe that everyone should play their social corporate roles at maximum and make use of the voices they have in bridging the gap of information of the real situation lying in front of us. Delivering education should be a joint planning between all the stakeholders which in this case should be the education ministry, schools, teachers, PIBG, parents themselves and of course, the children themselves. We should listen to the voices of all concerned, impacted by the new mode.
As such, as we are starting the new school session, looking into the transition module for Standard 1 students, it makes me wonder how well prepared the module is considering how last year had brought quite a massive disruption to our education system. With successive closures and openings of schools for who knows how many hours only that our kids have spent at school, the Education Ministry by now should have realized that there is no way the same module should be able to cater the learning loss due to last year’s disruption. Yet, we didn’t see any assessment conducted in order to estimate the learning gaps, hence prepare the remedials to accelerate the learning or cater to the students' learning programs. As much as it sounds troublesome to the education institutions, if that is what needs to get things corrected due to last year's impacts, I believe it is no harm to get through the hassle. After all, the new norm should not just change the learning mode but also customize the learning program to suit our children's current scenarios.
As much as we have concerns over students' readiness, the ministry should also ensure that teachers are well prepared considering that they have to drastically change their methodology of teaching for face to face teaching, now to a PdPR mode where many may not be prepared or creative enough to go through with the new teaching methods. We must acknowledge that there is definitely a gap among teacher skills, guidance and resources for an online teaching.
Even with the sufficient infrastructure, digital resources provided, some teachers may not be flexible enough to adapt to online teaching for there may be a lack of ICT skills that could probably hinder their creativity in making online teaching interesting especially for children. So, you see - it is not just about the struggle for the kids but also the struggle for the teachers that are so used to face to face teaching that they are now struggling in their professional development themselves.
While we are seeing gaps in PdPR execution, PdPR should not be the only means explored by the education ministry but should be a combination of both. If managing large students could potentially be a concern, why not introduce something similar like how the corporate world is adapting today like alternate groups to work in office - WFH setting.
Having alternate groups to come to office have proven a good safety measure for Covid 19 prevention. Hence, the government should consider implementing the same approach for schooling where children will alternately have a combination of scheduled home learning as well as physical schooling. The needs of physical schooling are critical for children especially in developing their learning skills through direct teaching by teachers as well as social interaction with their peers among other students. Children need to continuously build their characters, and the best place to create characters and be motivated, are at school. The momentum of development might be slow compared to full schooling sessions but at least children can still have social interactions among children at the same age for we see there are gaps in many areas by now to execute PdPR.
At this stage, where children have been quite detached from physical class, the need to look beyond Covid is as crucial as looking into reviving the economy, the health of the nation. While we are talking over economic reforms, often we neglect the needs of children in accessing the right to equal access of education. Often we tend to hold the decisions in policy makings when it comes to education and neglects the importance of education to children. Failing to act towards gaps in education access is the same as denying their rights to be educated, after all, education has proven to be a powerful tool to bring themselves out of poverty and lift themselves to a higher socio economic hierarchy. Not just that, education of children is the vital key in sustaining the development secured today and the government shouldn't think twice to allocate more for education financing - For children is our nation’s future investment.
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