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Global Societal Issue: Lack of Education

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Global Societal Issue: Lack of Education

Introduction
World wide disruption to academic systems caused by the 2019 pandemic was one of the
largest academic disruptions in the history of the education. The pandemic interfered with the
orderly academic process that necessitated formulation of more innovative ways for educating
the learners even after the disruption. Despite the efforts of formulating new learning means, the
efforts merely succeeded. The failure could be articulated to slow adaptiveness by the learners
which was not the required responsive-effect required out of them. Equally, learners within the
same cohort learning from different environments contributed to the failure of the formulated
strategies since the learners were differently equipped resource wise even if they were learning
using the same adopted strategies within their cohort. In most developing and under-developed
zones of the world, the pandemic resulted in a total education stoppage since the working
education strategies being adopted in other developed zones could not be adopted or
implemented in these under-developed zones. The failure of adoption of strategies already
proven to be successful in other zones is associated with poverty and lack of adequate resources
in the under-developed zones to facilitate the adoption. The overall educational setbacks
propagated by the pandemic cumulatively resulted in lack of education, however differently to
different parts of the world due to different developmental levels and availability of resources. In
this paper, the global societal issue, “lack of education” will be thoroughly described along with
proposed solutions to end the issue, statistical data to validate the issue, and ethical outcomes
that evolve from the proposed solutions
Background Information of Lack of Education
How the Issue Developed and Why it is a Societal Issue
Upon the realization of COVID-19 effects, most countries in the world carried out total
schools’ closure. Schools as well as higher learning institutions were shut down as means of
counteracting the spread of the pandemic. According to UNESCO, more than 1.6 billion learners
from the entire globe were affected, one in every five students could not attend school, and one
in every four could not show up for higher education classes for institutions that did not undergo
total shutdown. This resulted in education systems pivoting to remote learning in early 2020, by
deploying multi-modal strategies like online-learning, television, and radio education with some
going for print media and instant messaging so as to promote the continuity of the learning
process (UNESCO, 2021, Pg. 1). Due to learning from different environments, the quality of remote
learning strategies varied greatly, not mentioning the varied access of the education for students
from marginalized areas with a huge proportion of the students least likely to access the remote
learning. Even for the quite advantaged students who could access the remote learning, the
administered learning was at best partial substitutes for in-person learning. The education
setback affecting students from all spheres of economic segregated social groups makes it a
typical societal issue. The heightening evidence emerging more than twenty months after the
schools’ closure depicted that millions of the learners were at risk of never resuming with their
academics even if things were to settle in the near future. Despite the adverse effects of the
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pandemic on the global education, it clearly depicted the existing inequalities embedded in
education systems thereby whistle-blowing to the relevant authorities to strive for equity in the
education systems.
Perspectives from Populations on the Issue
Generally, the cost and benefits of lack of education as a result of schools’ closure due to
the COVID pandemic remains insufficiently known (Engzell et al., 2021, Pg. 1). However, it is
clear that most students made little or no progress at all while learning from home. According to
Engzell et al (2021, Pg. 2)., a natural experiment that occurred in Netherlands showed that very
little progress was made by learners during the school shutdown period. In the experiment,
national examination results were analyzed for national tests that occurred immediately before
and after the schools shut down. The natural experiment results conformed with the general
population’s views that only unrecognizable progress was done by the remote learning strategies.
The Netherland’s natural experiment is the best case-study for it was only affected with a short
lockdown, and has relatively equitable school funding.
Proposed Solution to Lack of Education as a Result of Schools’ Shutdown
School closure presented a logical solution during social distancing within societies in the
COVID era. However, the impacts of the school shutdown on education resulted to more
devastating effects such as high dropout cases, and low resilience to academic shocks especially
for countries that already had low educational outcomes due to low developmental scores. These
effects when summed up results in lack of education both in developed and underdeveloped
states. The lack of education will further result in more devastating effects to the individual
learners and to respective nations at large. Therefore, a suitable solution to address the issue has
to be formulated. The solution should be multidimensional and be able to address both the class
loses incurred during the schools’ shutdown as well as address any future similar problems. Such
a solution includes the globalization of the education through technology incorporation into the
learning process (OECD, 2020, Pg. 3). Unfortunately, during the onset of the pandemic, only a few
educational systems all over the world had attained to incorporate technology into their learning
systems.
Technology incorporation into the learning systems will offer more time for learning
process both to the learners and instructors compared to face to face learning. This extra time
emanates from the fact that extensive learning sessions can be scheduled on addition to normal
learning sessions (Zheng et al., 2021, Pg.1). The extra provided time will enable the learners to
regain the class losses they incurred during the pandemic period. Despite the challenges
encountered during the pandemic, online learning still proofed effective in most developed and
developing regions (OECD, 2020, Pg. 2). Also, the learning model was not provided with enough
time for it to be effectively incorporated into the learning systems. This shows that if the learning
model is provided with sufficient time as well as a considerable number of resources be invested
into it will result to more effective results than those witnessed during the pandemic.
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Statistical data to validate Education disruption due to COVID

Concerning the pandemic’s effect on the education sector, different statistical data have
been compiled with each tackling the pandemic’s effects from a different perspective. The
available peer reviewed sources also vary in the scope of tackling the subject matter but still
conform to each other by the kind of idea they propagate. Some of the outstanding sources
include; Journal of Education and Practice: Impact of coronavirus pandemic on education,
Frontiers in Psychology Journal: Effects of covid-19-related school closures on Student
Achievement and an article titled Impacts of the COVID-19 control measures on widening
educational inequalities. The information provided in the articles is still valid due to little time
difference to their time of publication.
Journal of Education and Practice: Impact of coronavirus pandemic on education
Validity and reliability
The scholarly journal article depicts a high level of construct validity by the way the
authors execute their ideas. The entire text stays on track in explaining the impact of the
pandemic as outlined on the article title. Also, the general arrangement of the entire paper with
well define headings that outlines the idea of the subsections eases the flow of ideas. Whenever a
borrowed idea was employed, there was acknowledgement to the authors of the source used. The
paper also details the research process from the rationale of carrying out the research, data
collection, and analysis outlining the employed criteria. The main effects of the pandemic as
outlined by the article is the increase in academic gap between student (Onyema et al., 2020,Pg.
108). This was due to most governments imposing curfews that restricted movements on fear of
the individuals transmitting the virus. Students were also affected by the curfew thereby
restricting face to face learning.
Strengths
The paper is clear on outlining the impacts of coronavirus pandemic on world-wide
education. Equally, there is use of well-defined examples and case studies in elaborating of
critical instances. There is also a clear chronological outlining of co-dependent ideas. For
example, since school closure is the causal effect resulting from the covid pandemic, the authors
firs begin by explaining the emergence of the pandemic before resolving to discussing the effects
of the pandemic.
Weakness
The method of data collection addressed in the abstract of the paper does not exhaustively
exploit all the methods employed. The authors outline use of questionnaires as the method used
for data collection whereas there is usage of meta-analyses in analyzing pre-existing researches
in outlaying ideas.
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Frontiers in Psychology Journal: Effects of covid-19-related school closures on Student

Achievement
Validity and reliability
The journal article’s information currency is less than two years old thereby the
information is not yet outdated. The article’s main idea is to offer a systematic review of the
emerging evidence relating school closure due to the pandemic and the student achievement. The
scope of the research and objectivity levels portrayed in the article’s contents positively impacts
its reliability and validity. The work is also precise and directly addresses the subject matter
making it easy to follow through its ideas. The effects related to schools’ closure due to COVID
pandemic on students’ academic achievement addressed in the article include; degraded
performance in critical subjects such as mathematics and sciences (Hammerstein et al., 2021, Pg.
3). This effect aligns with the learning loses incurred during schools’ closure. Such logical
ideations depicted with the contents of the articles further contributes to its validity and
reliability.
Strengths
The authors employed simple, precise and focused outlaying of their ideas with the
support of case studies. They also carried out a risk of bias assessment of their work by
employing the Cochrane risk assessment thereby rendering their work bias-free.
Weakness
Only secondary sources were employed in the compiling of this work thereby its validity
and reliability depending on the accuracy, scope, and content validity of the parent sources.

Impacts of the COVID-19 control measures on widening educational inequalities

Validity and reliability
The article is well arranged with subsections well titled from the abstract to the
conclusion making it easy to flow through. The article is also current thereby its information is
not outdated and conforms to other current relevant sources addressing the same subject matter.
The article clearly outlines how the pandemic impacted exacerbated the pre-existing socio-
economic inequalities and disparities among societies especially in education (Darmody et al.,
2021, Pg. 1). The unchanged focus in addressing the topic makes the article relevant, valid, and
reliable.
Strengths
Unlike the first two articles that directly addressed the impacts of the pandemic on the
students’ academics, this article addresses the disparities in access of education brought about by
the pandemic
Weakness
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The article instills a sense of societal socio-economic segregation in readers.

The Ethical Outcomes that Evolve from Online Learning
The sudden transformation in learning means to online learning is accompanied by both
ethical and unethical outcomes due to the exploitation of the newly acquired learning avenues.
Ethical Outcome: Integrity
Unlike direct face to face learning, online learning facilitates the learning process with
each participant in their own space of choice. With such a provision, attainment of a conducive
individual learning environment requires a great deal of self-respect, commitment and
observance of morals by individuals (Muraina et al., 2022, Pg. 101). Therefore, effective online
learning instills a sense of integrity in its participants.

Unethical Outcome: Violation of scholastic honesty

During online learning, the learner has all the freedom in their disposal due to lack of
direct supervision by the instructor (Muraina et al., 2022, Pg. 102). The online environment
introduces new ethical issues such as violation of scholastic honesty, for example when
undertaking tests since ultimate transparency will depend on the learners’ honesty.
Conclusion
In summary, the world-wide academic disruptions as a result of the COVID pandemic
resulted in very devastating effects to the academic systems all over the globe. The pandemic
caused total academic stoppage, whose duration differed from place to place due to different
developmental levels. The lack of education during the pandemic period resulted to adverse
outcomes whose effects are still being addressed. Strategies such as digitalizing the worlds’
education is one of proposed solutions devised to address the long-term effects of lack of
education due to the pandemic. However, the proposed solution is also accompanied by both
positive and negative ethical outcomes thus necessitating a great deal of supervision for the
success of the strategy.