As schools tentatively re-opened their doors to pupils around the world for the Autumn term last month, children found themselves returning together to familiar territories, but with very different structures in place to keep them physically apart.
In many countries, children are now facing a myriad of stringent safety measures such as staggered arrival times, smaller class groups, desk washing by each child, frequent hand-washing, face masks, open windows for ventilation, desk spacing six feet apart, temperature checks and plastic desktop partitions, and the potential banning of contact sports and activities which involve singing – such behaviours, it would appear, are to become their new normality.
In some schools in China, temperature checks on arrival result in a ‘green’ code on their smartphone health code program in the absence of a fever, permitting the child access to the classroom, while those pupils with a raised temperature are sent home to quarantine and continue their lessons online.
To cope with the difficulties of socialisation, digital ‘Playdates’ are being organised between teachers and parents to allow children to meet their friends at a distance.
According to UNESCO, 1.38billion learners have been impacted by national school closures worldwide, resulting in governments and educators seeking to reinvent the delivery of education through digital platforms.
The overall market for online education is projected to reach $350billion by 2025 and Covid-19 has singularly expedited this projection.
5G Technology in China, the US and Japan is expected to provide ‘learning anywhere, anytime’ possibilities which will radically alter the way we deliver learning experiences to our children, veering away from structured classrooms to integrating learning experiences which will be threaded throughout our daily routines.
Currently only 60% of the globe’s population is online, so large scale coalitions between dynamic industries such as Microsoft and Google will be vital to opening doors to investment into new digital and high-tech platforms of educational delivery.
To create growth and prosperity in the future, Educators worldwide will need to pull together to find strategies to show students at every level that the brave new world they stepped into in 2020 is not a place to be feared, but somewhere in which they can pioneer new ideas and explore infinite possibilities. This may involve expensive compromises such as virtual reality (VR) technology and Augmented Reality (AR) to allow the pursuance of activities which can no longer be physically feasible owing to the risks of cross-contamination of infection. Physical exercise is still vital to maintain optimum health, however, and will need to be carried out daily in small, socially distanced groups.
With so many new challenges unexpectedly being imposed on us all, Mentalhealth.org has put together a list of supporting information for parents, teachers and caregivers which can be found here: