Dr Saswati Paik is a Faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
During the COVID -19 pandemic, when millions of children across the globe are out of the school premises almost continuously for more than a year, it is important to talk about the value of building resilience in schools and communities. This article talks about the need of building resilience in schools and a possible pathway to build it with the example of the current situation of prolonged school closure due to the pandemic.
Revisiting disruptions in schools
Untimely closure of schools happens every year in various parts of India. Many places become inaccessible due to the sudden or seasonal onset of natural hazards. When schools become inaccessible, numerous children experience disruption in schooling, get detached from formal education for days, weeks, and even months. Geo-political unrests cause school closure for an unpredictable period in several parts. In India, around 17% of children get excluded silently from the school system before completing their secondary education as they start working to support the family. At least 1.5 million girls under 18 get married each year in India (www.unicef. org), and numerous children become victims of child trafficking. School disruption results in a learning gap, and over a period, young children without adequate parental support and guidance cannot build up their resilience to cope with the set expectations of curriculum and assessment, so they fail. Even their schools do not have any resilience plan to bring them back to their normal life and academic rhythm.
COVID-19 pandemic seems to be the most visible hazard now, reminding us of the need of building resilience among children. It shows us how it looks like when disruption in formal education happens for long periods. Only around 20%-25% of schools in India could continue the remote teaching process since March 2020, and that has added to the already existing inequality and inequity among children in society.
What is resilience in a school and how does that matter?
Resilience describes the capacities of societies, communities and individuals or a socio-ecological system to deal with adverse consequences and the impacts of hazard events (Birkmann, 2011). Resilience consists of perseverance, reflection, and help-seeking (Poutney and Forbes, 2020).
There is a rich metaphor around this idea of resilience which links the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi that means ‘to join with gold’. It is a crafting method that consists of assembling “broken pieces of an accidentally-smashed pot” (Tocino- Smith, 2021). Symbolically, we can think of the bowl as a human, cracked by the contingency of life, the imperfections caused by the cracks represent the worth of the bowl. It is important to implant the question inside the minds at a younger age: “How can we turn our life cracks into gold?” This relates to the idea of building resilience in schools, especially for younger students while navigating the most vital years of their lives. Such a resilience talks about resilience at the individual level as well as at the organisational and systemic level. While building such resilience in a school, the role of parents and community emerges as an integral part of the entire process. A very crucial aspect of resilience is that a child may become resilient while experiencing adversity. But resilience does not necessarily have to stem from trauma; it can grow from supportive home environments and classrooms as well. Therefore, building resilience in schools and communities may have multiple pathways.
Relevance of resilience in schools in the pandemic context
Research on positive psychology states that school plays a huge role in the lives of children, a setting where they spend at least 15,000 hours on average (Rutter et al, 1979). Since March 2020, most of the schools are not able to function normally due to the pandemic. According to a UNICEF report, at least 1 in 3 schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning while their schools were closed, and 1.6 billion children and young people across the globe were affected by school closures (UNICEF, 2020).
In India, maximum children are studying in schools run by the State Education Department have either no academic engagement or have extremely limited academic engagement since last year. More than 60% of children enrolled in India now study in these schools. Out of the remaining 40% of children, around 36% study in private unaided schools; the rest are in various other types of schools including residential schools run by various departments. Children studying in low-fee private schools are not getting the opportunity of virtual learning regularly because these schools are unable to afford investment (in terms of recurring material cost and cost for human resources) involved in it. The digital divide and lack of equity are now overtly exposed to all of us.
By now, many children are exposed to an uncertain future due to the livelihood crisis caused by the pandemic. Therefore, there are two possibilities: (i) a huge dropout of enrolled children (ii) numerous students will come back with a vast learning gap. Learning gaps will lead to children struggling to cope up with the syllabus, curriculum and assessments. Finally, if they cannot succeed to complete their journey in school, they will withdraw even before completing their school education. Thus, a major catastrophe for generations is predictable. This scenario could be a little different if the majority of schools in India were better prepared to deal with such crises if they had a resilience plan to cope with such emerging situations.
The need of bridging such gaps sustainably has emerged across the globe during this pandemic. Four levels of resilience must be built up – individual level (students’ level), school level, parental and community level, and systemic level. Such resilience will not only help the schools and children to cope up with the losses but also help to turn the life cracks of children into gold like a ‘Kintsugi’.
Perspectives and practices across the globe
UN agencies have highlighted that building resilience must become a core part of the planning and management of education systems. Such resilience can ensure the ability of prevention, preparation for and response to any possible future crises. The recommendations by them include a focus on equity and inclusion, reinforcing capacities for risk management at all levels of the system, ensuring strong leadership and coordination, and enhancing consultation and communication mechanisms (UN, 2020).
UNICEF has stated that education attainment is typically influenced by factors operating at four levels: (i) child and the family (gender, ethnicity, income, health, mobility) (ii) school (resources, teaching and learning practices, ethos, care and support) (iii) community (school-community relationships, engagement of local authorities, of civil society) (iv) national level (policies, investments, gender and social norms) (UNICEF, 2020).
The World Bank proposes that countries can build on the lessons of the pandemic. The recommendations made by the World Bank include the following: (i) Closing the digital divide (ii) aggressive investment in teachers’ professional development and use of technology to enhance their work (iii) Providing support to parents’ critical role in their children’s education (iv) building up a resilient system that requires better education conditions at home, devices, connectivity, and books (www.worldbank.org).
Various countries have started preparing their resilience plan for protecting their citizens from the post-COVID crisis. The European Parliamentary Research Service, with the Directorates-General for Internal Policies (IPOL) and External Policies (EXPO), has identified the capabilities and gaps in the European Union’s (EU) capacity to address structural risks. It has set out 66 potential structural risks confronting the European Union in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. It considers ways in which the EU and Member States could address them, either with existing capabilities or through filling gaps in policies and instruments (European Union, 2020).
A bunch of case studies from various countries around the world is published in International Studies in Educational Administration journal by the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (CCEAM) where ranges of practices are proposed as effective practices for building up resilience as experienced during the pandemic. Some of the important points that emerge from the articles received from 27 countries are mentioned below, indicating how a school can build up resilience:
• emphasis on local context and principal autonomy;
• mapping school community, its assets and strengths and needs to create a flexible plan that responds to unpredictable events based on a thorough understanding of, and consideration for, all members of the school community;• developing collegial relationships with teachers, students, and parents in such a way that most of them feel heard, appreciated, less anxious, and less alone;
• anticipating and providing the resources and training (particularly technology) that teachers and students may need if regular schooling is disrupted;
• using a variety of methods for communicating important information to all those concerned in a timely, clear, understandable, accurate and efficient manner.
Most of the points seem to be valid for numerous countries for their future planning. However, a contextualisation would make these choices better and more effective.
Making schools and communities resilient – A possible approach
During the pandemic, the Ministry of Education, Government of India, has held several consultations with the States and Union Territories (UTs) at various levels. While national-level consultations are going on, I would like to highlight an approach to slowly build resilience in schools at the micro level to ensure that children having negligible or no formal education for more than a year can cope up with their academic needs as per the expectations set.
Need of Resilience Building and its Prerequisites
Children having learning gaps due to school closure will need both academic and psycho-social support once they are back in school. It is already recognised by many within the system and academic experts that major revisions on curriculum and assessment patterns would be useful for each grade and subject. As per the existing systemic structure of school education, grade and subject-wise revision might be done at the state and/ or national level, but the execution must happen in the schools. Figure 1 presents a possible scenario of building resilience in schools post COVID-19 pandemic, for which a revision of grade and subject-wise curriculum and assessment must be made as the current thoughts and discussions suggest. At the same time, teachers’ capacity building is necessary, because they ultimately execute such action plans in the schools. While planning should happen centrally to maintain the status quo, there is a risk of delay. Often, the decision-making process gets stuck at various levels of the systemic hierarchy, and due to this, important processes get unreasonably delayed. If that happens due to the existing systemic issues, there is a possibility of further delay in executing this entire resilience-building process in the schools.
To avoid systemic delay due to bureaucratic red tapes, the following possible alternatives are proposed:
• capacity building for the execution of plans at the school level.
• making a transparent accountability framework with devolved power to schools, where the district and sub-district level functionaries will play a role to facilitate the execution process and leave the modalities to school-level execution, where functionaries will provide resources and budget support as and when required.
The rationale is that if the execution process is made easy and accountability of execution is given to individual schools, the process can be made easier and faster. Figure 2 depicts the idea.
In India, there are more than 1.55 million schools. Execution of a largely uniform plan for bringing the children back to school and reintegrating them will not be an easy process. That process may need a few years given the extent of school dropouts as indicated by various reports so far. While executing this plan, it must be clearly understood by the schools’ stakeholders that the resilience-building process is not a one-time affair. It needs to be sustainable because school disruption is frequent in various parts of the country. A plan of action
may lead to better preparedness for future unpredictable situations as well, but at the same time, starting with a small number of schools and later scaling up by replicating some practices would be pragmatic.
The willingness of the school management and teachers to take part in the project, and the commitment of the school authority to involve parents, community members and local governing bodies will play a big role in the success of such a process. And that process must start now because the COVID-19 pandemic is not going to disappear very soon. It may remain for a couple of years in pockets as epidemics. In such a scenario, preparation must start right now using the online mode. Schools’ Stakeholders can even connect with the students by using remote modes. Wherever that connection seems to be a challenge, a resource allocation initiative can be taken into consideration, using various modes of crowdfunding and resource planning.
Few important aspects to be emphasised while planning for a doable solution to make schools and communities resilient, attention must be paid to a few important aspects as mentioned below.Paying attention to parental awareness and education: The decision of schooling children is taken by their parents, and therefore, adults’ conviction regarding education is very important to make that happen. Most importantly, parents need to be convinced to bring their children back to school despite the challenges in their family life.
(ii) Identifying schools having the least resilience: Schools with the least resilience due to existing issues of infrastructure may need more time to build up resilience. More attention and intensive works are needed in these schools. For this, identifying such schools is very important.
(iii) Involving the community in the school’s resilience-building process: Community participation has remained as a mere policy mandate in all educational policies. Without the active engagement of the community, it is very difficult to work in schools having multiple constraints which affect the resilience-building process. According to the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, each school must constitute a School Management Committee (SMC) consisting of teachers, parents and guardians of children enrolled in that school, and elected representatives of the local authority. SMC is supposed to monitor the working of the school, prepare, and recommend a school development plan, monitor the utilisation of the grants received from the appropriate government or local authority or any other source. This is the time when the SMC in government schools and similar bodies in private schools (Parent-Teacher Association) must be strengthened (Government of India, 2009).
(iv) Realistic plan for Pupil- Teacher Ratio (PTR): In most of the elementary schools (till Grade VIII) in India, the proposed pupil-teacher ratio is 1:30, which means schools with a smaller number of students enrolled have one or two teachers. Such schools are mostly located in small villages or hamlets, and many are in socio-economically backward areas. In such schools, teachers’ attention to children’s education is an unrealistic imagination because the teachers need to handle multiple grades at a time along with other official works.
(v) School autonomy and systemic leadership to be emphasised: Researchers often highlight the fact that schools vary in terms of their contexts and needs, and school as a “learning organisation” often responds to the outside environment. Therefore, school leadership and systemic leadership must be prioritised (Senge, 2012). In India, school leadership and systemic leadership seems to be rarely encouraged. Government schools often need to follow instructions from various higher authorities, and administrative tasks dominate over the academic engagement of teachers, more so in State Government – run elementary schools, with very few exceptions.
(vi) Formation and strengthening of academic and support groups in schools: It is important to engage teachers and school leaders in the task of revision of curriculum for lower grades (till Class VIII) where Central or State-level standardisation will not matter in the execution of revised curriculum set by the Central or State level.
For each school, two groups can be formed: (i) academic group and (ii) support group. Each academic group could scrutinise subjectspecific areas of school subjects which can be led by two teachers, and supported by one person who will be a subject expert. If needed, there could be workshops organised for teachers online for redesigning subject-specific curriculum and assessments. The academic group could meet once a week for the initial 4-5 weeks, and later, once in a fortnight, to review the process as per the need. The support group needs to identify the areas where external support is required. That may include financial support for teachers, school and/or students. While the revised curriculum could be executed on a remote mode as decided by the respective school, there could be regular interaction with students, SMC members/ PTA members and parents also which could be fixed as per the mutual convenience as a feedback mechanism. After six months of operation, a mid-term evaluation could be done for the student’s progress and teachers’ challenges. There could be an end-term evaluation towards the end of the first year of the project. If needed, a similar process could continue to bridge the learning gap better in the same set of schools with a set of children that are identified requiring extra support.
Conclusion
While we keep on talking about “bridging the digital divide” in many ways, the pandemic has made it clear that we must have to build up a mechanism to organise remote modes of learning to reassure the children to be in touch with their formal education space. The pandemic has reminded us that our current model of schooling was shaped by an industrial revolution in the 18th century and that it is now time we move on. The role of schools conceived as genuine learning organisations with resilience mechanisms becomes the need of the hour as we progress towards a post-pandemic time.
References:
• Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (CCEAM) (2020). International Studies in Educational Administration. Canada.
• European Union (2020). Towards a more resilient Europe post-coronavirus. Brussels. www.europarl.europa.eu
• Government of India (2009). Right to Education Act. New Delhi.
• Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., Ouston, J., & Smith, A. (1979). 15,000 hours: Secondary schools and their effects on children. Shepton Mallet: Open Books.
• Senge, P. M. (2012). Schools that learn: a fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents and everyone who cares about education. Crown Business.
• Tocino-Smith, Juliette (2019). Teaching Resilience in Schools and Fostering Resilient Learners. https:// positivepsychology.com/teachingresilience/
• United Nations (2020). Policy Brief: Education During COVID-19 and Beyond. www.un.org
• UNICEF (2020). Building Resilient Education Systems beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations for education decision-makers at national, local and school levels. Switzerland: Geneva.
