Post COVID Education should be Parent Engaged Education

This post is a follow up to my earlier note on the secondary impact of COVID. In a series of articles, I hope to share ideas on not only how to address the impact of the crisis but also find ways to build back better.

My personal experience both as a child and a parent confirms my belief that the academic outcomes of a child is directly proportional to the engagement of parents in the process of education. I grew up with parents who, like most Indian parents, strongly believed in the need for quality education. While they weren't able to help me with my doubts, they ensured that I committed time and attention to education. And that made a big difference to my academic outcomes.

However, the current investments by Philanthropy in Education have often limited or completely avoided the role of parents in Educational outcomes. To be fair, engaging parents is a difficult problem to solve for many reasons. Firstly, many parents themselves have limited education and hence don't see a role for themselves beyond enrolling a child and ensuring attendance. Secondly, most of them don't have time to engage in education of their child. Thirdly, there are infrastructural limitations for children to engage in meaningful learning at home. Lastly, unlike Public education there are no channels to engage parents at scale and hence customer acquisition is expensive for organisations. However, from countless conversations that I have had with parents from such backgrounds, it is obvious that parents care about their children's education. They are willing to pay for it even at the cost of their lifestyle. What they lack are means to engage meaningfully.

Given COVID-19 has forced the schools to stay shut, the role of parents' in education is coming back to the fore. This offers us an opportunity to focus on parents in the education process so that it continues once schools reopen. Here are five key ideas for innovation that can ensure parent engagement sustains, scales and ultimately delivers outcomes.

1. Interventions & Assessments first generation parents can use

My son learns music and French at school, both of which I don't have any expertise in. I can listen to him playing an instrument and judge whether he is playing it well or not. If he plays too poorly, I sit with him and encourage him to practise more. However, I don't understand French at all. So often times, I don't ask him about his French lessons since I don't know how well he is doing. Most parents from economically under-privileged families feel the way I feel about French about all subjects that their child studies today. Is there a way we can shift such parents' engagements from my French levels to my Music levels?

For instance, can there be simple resources that are shared with parents on WhatsApp that allows them ask the child a question which they can use to evaluate whether the child is actually learning. Thanks to WhatsApp and audio calls, these don't have to be lettered but could be voice notes that parents can use. Say, a weekly set of questions on Saturday morning based on what the child of a particular grade is learning. This does two things - One, it gives the parents a chance to engage and understand what the child is learning. Two, it signals to the child that the parent is interested in their education and hence gets them to commit to their learning.

2. At home Learning products for families

Both my parents worked in labour intensive jobs and often came home very exhausted. We also took up additional work in the evenings to supplement our family incomes. But there was a ritual my mother institutionalised at home despite everything that went on in our house. She got access to the latest issue of Competition Success Review (from neighbours) and every other evening, made my brother and me sit under our asbestos roof to ask us quiz questions from the magazine. She had the answer key and we didn't. It lasted an hour and we always learnt something new at the end of it.

Can we imagine Ed-Tech products that are designed for families like mine that encourage rituals for parents and children to work together on learning. Apps that have, say, a Sunday evening quiz, 10 questions before dinner, daily learning question? Apps that subtly help institutionalise learning rituals at home and more importantly, create spaces and legitimacy for learning at home. Such apps should be designed for parents who might not know the answers but still can engage in the process (like my mother with the quiz key)

3. Learning combined with well-being

Ensuring learning of a child does not mean only asking questions or doing quizzes at home. An encouraging parent is just as important as an involved parent. However, in most cases first generation parents do not have role models they can emulate to supporting their child. They rely on their own past, substituted experiences which might not always be effective. Encouraging everyday healthy practices for a child to feel loved and to know her parents are engaged in her growth will go a long way.

Can simple ideas like videos shared on WhatsApp on everyday rituals help parents pick up practices that they can emulate with their children? Can facilitated circles of parents in local communities sharing their experiences help them replicate what works and ensure they sustain these practices as a community? These could be as simple as asking a child how school was when they come back, telling stories in the night before they go to bed, stitching a little flower in their uniforms that make them feel special.

4. Digital libraries in communities

When my dad realised I loved books, he wanted to do something from his side to encourage me to study. Books were expensive and he couldn't buy me many. So, we cycled to a library near the bus depot and he got me a library membership. They mostly had fiction but it became a monthly ritual for us to do together - On our way in the cycle, I used to tell him what I read and I could see the back of his nodding head.

What books were then, digital tools are now. They are necessary but still expensive for parents to get for their children. Can we imagine digital libraries that lent tablets or provided "rented time" for children to engage in learning? Can there be shared resources with local internet that moderated access to children and learning? Can such learning centres hold little events for parents to bring their kids every weekend? Can there be local learning festivals that got promising children to go to district levels? In other words, can learning becoming a community event and a celebration.

5. Separating product development and distribution

As mentioned in the beginning, one of the biggest costs in these models is acquiring enough parents. Unlike current models where an MoU at a district or a state level allows an organisation to access many schools (and hence students), community models do not have distribution networks. Sattva worked with Google to understand deployment models at Community level as a learning partner for their Google Bolo product. You can find the results of the study here.

A key learning from the study, and my other experiences, is to separate product development and distribution. It is ineffective for every NGO to build learning interventions and find parents to engage. Can we identify organisations that can build models and solutions that are scalable? In parallel, can we create organisations that can attract, engage and sustain parent engagement in education. Knowing that there is a nationwide network to reach parents will encourage more innovation and faster iteration of solutions. Such a solution also help such organisations address issues beyond education that often impede engagement (E.g. Rural electrification, livelihoods etc)

A note on gender

The reality of gender disparity in Education cannot be starker than it is today. There have always been challenges in addressing the question of gender in schools when there are both boys and girls in a classroom. But a home-based intervention allows one to build a strong gender lens to learning. Incentives in the product, content specifically for parents with girls at home, scholarships for high performing girls, priority access in digital libraries - There are a whole host of solutions that can be enabled to encourage the participation of girls in education. Getting girls to school and ensuring they stay in school requires ongoing engagement with parents - At home help ensure regular doses of engagement that might prove effective in driving normative change among parents.

The post pandemic world offers us an opportunity to engage with issues anew and gives us a chance to reimagine our solutions for enduring problems. In education, this helps us ensure that education that prioritises the well-being of the child and makes the parent an equal stakeholder in learning. Do you agree? Let me know what you think.