Education Under Pandemic: Instead Of Lose, We Choose To Gain

COVID-19 has brought us the “new normal” for the third year. Schools have opened sporadically, forcing impoverished students to continue their studies in a poorer environment and with insufficient learning support. While access to learning was maintained in some contexts through a rapid shift to distance learning, the pre-existing social and digital divides deprived the underprivileged groups of continued learning and put them further behind.?

On the bright side, significant opportunities are found in times of greatest challenges. The lockdown and physical distancing measures caused not only unprecedented disruptions in the provision of education and training but have also catalyzed innovation. Effective policies established by global countries have sparked diverse, empirical inspirations for constructing a better and more equal future for the young generation. How can we bring Hong Kong closer to education equity in the post-pandemic era?

Lights of Future Education Equity in Hong Kong

1. Resolve deficiencies from technical perspective: human-centric technology

Since the pandemic started, different funding and sponsorships were launched to equip the students with hardware and software for accessing online learning resources. Swedish nonprofit organization Kiwix launched an offline reader for users to access online resources such as Wikipedia, TEDTalks, and Khan Academy without an internet connection. In collaboration with Orange Telecom, the devices have allowed millions of underserved students in Eastern Asia and Africa to learn easily.?

Our Fellow Ernest Chau uses technology to increase students’ learning motivation and reduce teachers’ workload. He started with adapting varied e-learning tools at school, for example, gamifying English learning and revision for dictation. He emphasized the importance of user-friendliness of technology as well. To accelerate the progress of e-teaching, he created a short online course of six topics for educators covering how to structure online lessons and use interactive e-learning tools available in different learning stages. This helped peer teachers to transition to remote teaching more comfortably and effectively.

2. Guard students from mental health issues: perception towards emotion

Almost half of the HK students, aged between 18 – 24, have reported symptoms of PTSD or depression during the pandemic. The suspension of in-person schooling and the way that students have been participating in school learning online are believed to be the major contributing factors. The pandemic has once again reminded us of the importance of preventive measures to safeguard students’ mental health. Students should be equipped with the ability and freedom to recognize and acknowledge emotion. In Finland, School Day, an education company, launched a mobile application called School Day@Home that aims to enhance the social and emotional learning of the students throughout lockdown. The students were asked to answer questions via the mobile app. The results were then sent to their teachers. By doing so, the student's mental health status was tracked and teachers could adjust the activities or lesson materials based on the findings.?

TFHK Fellow Yanna Yu 余茵娜 (Yanna) brought multiple interventions to support students’ mental well-being during this period. Students first learned in workshops about concepts of emotions and ways to cope with stress constructively, supplemented with future planning and self-exploration sessions. These cultivated the resilience and motivation necessary for students to get through the hardships they are facing. She also helped introduce animal-assisted therapy to her school in response to the observed emotional problems among students. Overall, Yanna constructed a safe environment for the expression of emotions and exploration of mental health.

Furthermore, our Fellow Sally Chen and Terri Kong advocate for the important role of parents in enhancing students’ mental health. They organized parent-children workshops and virtual art museum tours. For example, parents and children together went on a virtual visit to the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands, they drew portraits of one another, etc. Fruitful conversations were created and emotions are now expressed and more understood in each family.

3. Leverage cross-sector collaboration to maximize the resources for the education industry

“Education is everyone’s responsibility,” said Jorge Elorza, mayor of Providence, Rhode Island in the US, who noted that only through cooperation between diverse sectors, strengths and assets among the society are gathered and allocated precisely, amplifying separate efforts to the societal one. For instance, American media company EdSurge created the Learning Keeps Going column to share local and global strategies, tools, and experiences in response to school closures. This created a platform for educators to connect and exchange ideas to revamp teaching and learning experiences under the pandemic. It demonstrated that even a seemingly farfetched company could play a key role in education.

At Teach For Hong Kong, we believe that creating systemic change in education requires new thinking of cross-sector partnerships and strategies that engage the strengths and assets of the private and social sectors. We strive to build a stronger network across all sectors that direct more resources and experiences to local unprivileged students and promote education equity in a long run.

Our Fellows work closely with corporates and organizations to create projects that give their students transformative professional experiences, extracurricular activities as well as life and career education, for example, TFHK x 瑞信 Mentorship Program to increase students’ financial literacy; TFHK x Grosvenor Case Competition to equip students with the essential research and presentation skills.

As education around the globe move towards recovery from the pandemic, ensuring equitable and inclusive learning opportunities for all children remain a major challenge. Complex problems call for diverse interventions. This article has covered three areas, i.e. learning technologies, mental well-being, and cross-sector collaboration, where local needs are evident and low-hanging fruits are waiting for us to capture. Together with all stakeholders, we strive to bring equal learning opportunities to children in Hong Kong, during and beyond the pandemic.