A Report on Long Distance Learning in Canada

March 2020, as schools shut down in the wake of Covid-19 around, governments around the world are coping with the devastating impact that these closures have on the accessibility of education for all ages. According to a United Nations report, COVID-19 has kept 90% of children out of schools, an event that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guerres calls a “generational catastrophe, that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities”. Quality education is one of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of pragmatic objectives that set the standards for global progress towards achieving universal human rights. The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges to education, causing additional setbacks for those working towards achieving equal access to quality education for all by the year 2030.

 

The closure of schools not only defers learning, but also interrupts access to other essential services and resources. As Anna Levesque from the University of Ottawa explains, schools are spaces where children have “the right to be protected from violence, [to] receive information, [to] play, [to] access social support and to exercise their freedom of thought and assembly”. Effective government response is critical to halt the reversal of the hard-earned social progress made in the past decade. To halt the reversal of hard-earned social progress such as increases in all levels of education for both youth and adult learners, effective government response to the pandemic and its implications for education is critical.

 

The approaches that governments have used to make education COVID-safe vary between differing national infrastructures. For example, most countries have turned to online portals where parents and students can find pre-recorded videos. Some schools have  used virtual learning to its fullest potential by including games and interactive elements. However, about half of students around the world do not have access to the internet. Governments of countries with  limited internet access have turned to public broadcasting through air waves; daily television and radio programs are scheduled for children from K-12. 

 

One of War Child’s initiatives is supporting the implementation of infrastructure and safety nets to support the essential human right of education. War Child Canada is working in war torn countries such as Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and Uganda where children are vulnerable and likely to have their learning  drastically affected by the pandemic. War Child’s radio learning program in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has seen great success in providing high quality, accessible learning to remote villages, with students’ results matching or even surpassing those enrolled within the formal public system.

 

The reader must excuse the author for focusing solely on Canada from this point on as I am a Canadian writing for a chapter of War Child in Hamilton. I believe it is safe to assume that most readers will also be Canadian, and so, will find the information both more informative and compelling. For a more global perspective, the World Bank has put together a comprehensive overview of strategies undertaken by each country. As a tentative snow shrouds Ontario, the province lurches under another lockdown. It has been over a year since the first case of Covid-19 in Canada (January 25th 2020), and over a year of long-distance learning for students across Canada, from K-12 to university. 

 

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) consistently ranks Canada in the top ten countries for student outcomes and equity in education.  Canada also has some of the highest rates of tertiary education (or post-secondary) in the world, but these positive statistics do not exonerate it from systematic issues which enable oppression, discrimination, abuse and injustice to occur within its educational institutions. A study in 2017 from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission showed that 99 percent of high income families have access to the internet at home as compared to only 69 percent of low income families. This study does not account for the quality of the internet, and whether or not the students have individual devices with which to access their learning. Libraries, cafes and other public spaces that offer free wifi are no longer available to individuals who need them the most. Even if these spaces are open, as Marie-Eve Desrosiers, associate professor at the University of Ottawa, states: “it is tantamount to asking our already underprivileged students to accept greater risks to their health and their family’s health so they can keep up with connected students.” This is part of the global issue of “digital divide,” which exacerbates inequalities through unequal access to virtual learning opportunities, and is a prominent problem within Canada today.

 

One of the biggest hurdles in addressing our current education challenge is a lack of information on the effectiveness of current teaching methodologies. Provincial polling on pedagogical methods ranges from spotty to non-existent. How can we expect measures be put in place to support students when information about the problems students face is nowhere to be found? Paul Bennett, director of the Schoolhouse Institute in Nova Scotia, calls this oversight (or lack thereof) on the part of the Atlantic provincial governments “not really defensible", and calls for authorities and educators to be held accountable for evaluating and taking responsibility for the systems that they are implementing. Where “education officialdom” is lacking, public pollsters intervened and gathered important data on the state of youth. In short, children in grades 1 to 12 are bored, more stressed and feel less supported academically as compared to in-school learning. Moreover, 60% feel unmotivated and more than half say that they miss their friends most of all. 

 

Canada’s main educational challenges are, firstly, the lack of information on online-school performance around the country, and secondly, the risk of leaving behind  vulnerable families and those with limited access to the internet. An obvious solution would be to reopen schools, but that may not be possible for another month in some parts of the country. This is in part due to the second wave of cases during the November to January period, but also because of the new variants from Brazil, the UK and South Africa which appear to be more transmissible. As of January 16th, there have been COVID-19 variant cases in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. On January 30th, the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health penned a letter to Ontario Health and Education Ministers urging them to open schools before any other sector, citing schooling as an important factor for children’s development and mental health. In a critical period for their development, children must get the support that they need.