Understanding the scale of the problem

Despite the scale and growth of the learning technology market in recent years, technology-enabled teaching strategies over the last year have, unfortunately, not been wholly successful for a number of reasons, which this report will explore.

As a result, the social and economic damage of lost learning could consequently prove devastating to a whole generation. Based on a study to assess the impact of skills differences on earning potential by Hanushek and Woessmann (2020)­—where data was correlated between studies from the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills (PIACC) from 32 countries, and the latest assessment scores on the labour market income—a loss of just one third of a school year ultimately represents a loss of potential income of between 2.5 per cent to 4 per cent over the student’s adult working life.

The learning loss has been significant in developing countries, especially those with fragile economies.

The head of non-governmental organisation, Teach for Uganda, Kassaga Arinaitwe, for example, surmised that: ‘70 to 80 per cent (of students in Uganda) have not been able to learn online’; and ‘many are so behind, it will need an entire year to bring them back up to speed.’

According to a report from the London School of Economics, pupils across the UK have lost out on a third of their learning time since the pandemic started in March 2020. This takes into account remote learning initiatives rolled out across the country.
The same study also highlights that in each of the four nations of the UK, the poorest pupils lost more learning days than their richer counterparts.

Even ‘beacon territories’, such as the Netherlands—which only had a relatively short eight-week lockdown, boasts a highly egalitarian system of school funding, and has the world’s highest rate of broadband access—experienced challenges; a PNAS survey reveals it also experienced a learning loss of roughly one-fifth of a school year.

0%

greater learning loss among students from disadvantaged homes

Even ‘beacon territories’, such as the Netherlands—which only had a relatively short eight-week lockdown, boasts a highly egalitarian system of school funding, and has the world’s highest rate of broadband access—experienced challenges; a PNAS survey reveals it also experienced a learning loss of roughly one-fifth of a school year.

Not only did students make little or no progress while learning from home during those eight weeks, but that learning loss was significantly more pronounced among students from disadvantaged homes, with losses 60 per cent larger among students from less-educated homes.

It is imperative, therefore, that policy makers and educators work together across the globe to create an effective collective change programme, based on examples of global best practice, to address the considerable shortfalls in current methods of online teaching—especially in light of the very real possibility of further pandemic-induced lockdowns in the future.