COVID – 19 and its Impact on Early Childhood Education
Nature proved its way of setting things right once again in the form of Coronavirus when humans became reckless and profligate. The world is shaken. Lockdowns have cleansed the polluted air (Watts, 2020). The vacant highways enabled wild animals to move freely and enter the cities (Conde Nast Traveller, 2020). Corona affected man’s lifestyle irrespective of his social status, gender, age, intelligence and taught the lesson of equality. The worst affected area is the education sector, especially early education.
Corona Virus Disease or Co Vi D – 19 is the name given to not one particular virus but a group of viruses whose core is made up of genetic material and is surrounded by lipid envelope and spike-like proteins which look like a crown. Hence, the name corona (OpenWHO, 2020, p. Introduction). Coronaviruses cause Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Since this infection is similar to the SARS outbreak in 2002, Corona Virus is also called SARS-CoV – 2 (Osmosis, 2020).
Common symptoms of COVID – 19 are fever, fatigue and respiratory difficulties such as cough, sore throat and shortness of breath. Affected people even lose their sense of taste or smell and develop a skin rash. Severely affected may develop pneumonia and, in extreme cases, organ failure leading to death. Although 80% of people recover from the disease without any treatment, the weak and those already struggling with other medical issues might get seriously ill (OpenWHO, 2020). COVID – 19 is a pandemic spreading across the globe. Its reproductive number is R-naught of 2 – 2.5, meaning it spreads to 2 or 2.5 new people compared to earlier epidemics like flu which had the R-naught of 1.3. The disease spreads through people who are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic, i.e. who do not display any symptoms. The virus spreads through the droplets of saliva, which enters the healthy person’s mouth, nose or eyes, when the affected person coughs, sneezes or rubs his nose and touches the things in the environment like a door handle lift buttons, railings and so on. Although the virus is not airborne, it could ‘remain infectious’ in the air for three hours (Xiao, Popa, Syrnioti, Emfietzoglou, & Desai, 2020) which makes COVID – 19 a deadly disease.
In addition, since COVID – 19 is a new virus, no antibiotic or vaccine is invented yet. At the moment, only prevention could control the disease. Preventing the disease is possible in two ways. One, like China, to lock down the areas completely and block out all the roads except for emergency services. Two, like South Korea, by establishing testing centres and conduct COVID – 19 tests on all the people, quarantine those who show mild symptoms, and isolate those who have tested positive and display severe symptoms (Xiao, Popa, Syrnioti, Emfietzoglou, & Desai, 2020). With its meagre health facilities, India followed the first model of controlling COVID – 19 and locked down its cities.
In various phrases, the lockdown was in force from 25th March 2020 to 31st May 2020 (Banerjea, 2020). The first phase came into force one or two weeks before the Annual Exams began, and in some State’s matriculation exams were not yet started. Across the globe, 184 countries had closed their schools affecting 1.53 billion students. Among them, 155million were preschoolers (India Education Diary Bureau Admin, 2020) (Dejongh, 2020) (UNESCO, 2020). In India alone, 320million students were out of the school, out of whom 10million were preschoolers (2020). According to UNESCO statistics, 63million primary and secondary school teachers were affected by the pandemic (2020). Regrettably, compared to other levels, early childhood education was hit hard. Hundreds of preschools were permanently closed, resulting in thousands of preschool teachers, drivers and other support staff losing their jobs.
Uncertainty
The Karnataka State Education Department controls all the schools irrespective of the boards to which they are affiliated. The Department advised the schools to reopen in a staggered manner from 1st July to 20th July 2020 and provided three models for the schools to function. The first model was to function as usual but maintaining social distance; the second model was to function in two shifts by dividing the whole school into two parts, and the third model was to work on alternate days, i.e. 1st to 5th standard on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 6th to 10th standard on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. For all these models, the department advised getting parents’ opinions (Reopening of Schools/ Starting Admission Processes, 2020). The teachers were asked to conduct online classes for the children who stayed at home. Meanwhile, the Education Department, which had initially suggested conducting online classes from 1st to 10th standard, changed its order as per the recommendation of NIMHANS and insisted on stopping online classes till 5th standard (Bhat, 2020) (Ullas, 2020), (Bhat, 2020) and (Bhat, 2020). Subsequently, on 29th June 2020, a revised order recommended to resume the online classes for all but restricted the timings for the preschools up to 30 minutes per week. The Education Department’s frequent change of decisions caused confusion, distrust, unhappiness among parents, school management and especially teachers.
The effect of the pandemic on early childhood education:
- Online issues – teaching online impacted early childhood education in many ways:
- Technologically Untrained Teachers – The teachers were not trained in using the technology or offering lessons online which left most of the teachers bewildered, fearful and annoyed at having to speak to the camera. Some were new to online portals, and audio and video recordings.
- The surge of Webinars – face to face workshops gave way to live webinars. Schools conducted several training programs through webinars, educating teachers in using online portals like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and so on, which enabled the teachers to get used to the digital teaching within a short while.
- Non-availability of technology – The teachers were ready to use the technology, but some students had no access to technology as either the parents were working from home or the older sibling was using the only device available.
- Fear of increased screen time – Parents were continuously worried about their children being in front of a computer or using the mobile phone for a longer period of time increasing the amount of screen time.
- Parents as shadow teachers – the online classes were the best solution found in educating children in COVID – 19 times. Unfortunately, 2½-year-old children were not able to pay attention to what a teacher spoke about. Hence, the classes were conducted for training parents to be shadow teachers. But when both parents were working, they had no time to spare to attend the half an hour online classes and help their children. They resented schools since it was they who did the actual teaching.
- Impact on children’s cognition – The working parents may find no time to attend the online classes and help the child which may lead to neglecting the child or failure to provide invigorating activities. In such circumstances, the child grows deprived of mental stimulation, without making much use of the sensitive periods for refining senses and language at the right time. This may adversely affect the child’s cognition later in life.
- Physical and Mental well-being of the child – The goal of early childhood education is not limited to educating children as in other levels of education. Health and hygiene are also a part of Early Childhood Education’s objectives (Munireddy, 2018). Lockdown of preschools, like Anganawadis which took care of health, nutrition along with learning and emotional well-being, was a threat for the physical and mental development of the children since they do not get this facility at home (UNESCO, 2020).
- Deprived of Social Development – On online classes, children meet each other virtually but have no opportunity to communicate with each other. On the other hand, their evening playtime with friends was also discontinued. The deprivation of social interaction reduces the opportunity to learn social skills like getting along with others, start and end a conversation, maintain eye contact, taking turns, recognizing feelings of others and so on (Alberg, 2019).
- Tense Environment – The economic impact of COVID – 19 is that the parents either lost their jobs or their salaries were truncated to 50% or more. The financial stress and employment security are the major factor factors leading to anxiety in the household (Taylor, Stevens, & Raphael, 2017). The anxiety of parents is passed on to children either directly or indirectly in not paying their school tuition fee and sending them to the villages making them live away from them.
- Drop-in admission: The admissions into early childhood education dropped severely. The first reason was that the parents were frightened of COVID – 19 and were wary about the young children following social distancing, hand washing and the other precautions. The second reason was the ever-existing one, not understanding the importance of early childhood and its education, which is the foundation age of life and the basis for all learning and experiences in later life (Munireddy, 2018). Studies indicate that the children who have stimulating environments at this age are highly involved in their activities, have improved attention span, are disciplined and participate actively in higher classes. The third reason was ½ an hour class per week appeared to be worthless and a waste of money.
- Schools Permanently Shut down – The schools had already closed for three months for summer holidays. In addition, the government had advised the schools not increase the school fee, which was understood by the parents as not to collect a fee. The existing students refused to pay any tuition fee. Lack of new admissions, and monthly tuition fee, the schools had no way of paying rent for the building, or salaries to the teachers or the support staff. Hence, most of the schools closed their gates and stored their materials in a rented storage facility.
- Global Impact on Early Childhood Education – An educational webinar, organized on 15th July 2020 under the patronage of Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, UNESCO Special Envoy Literacy for Development, stressed the importance of early childhood education and care. The webinar pointed out the vulnerability of young children and that early childhood was a blind spot even in the pre-COVID societies (UNESCO, 2020). Webinar resonated John Dewey’s famous expression, “the world … has forgotten the child”(Montessori, 1993, p. 4). The coalition’s call to invest in the citizens of tomorrow not only made the countries to take early childhood education seriously but also strengthened the early education world and start thinking from a different perspective in educating the children of this age.
The children between 2 ½ and 5 ½ are the worst affected due to COVID – 19. The older children have the language to share and demand their needs, whereas the children in early childhood are often taken for granted. Their education is looked down upon, and parents deduce that early childhood education is inferior and that children could catch up later. While getting a device for online learning or attending an online class, the older sibling will prioritise. Early childhood is a precious age and an age of plenty that has to be helped proficiently since they are in the making of our future generation.