The lack of a pro-active stance in most Russian regions, municipalities, and schools with regards to anti-coronavirus disease measures is an evident problem of Russian education. In some regions, education managers took a more active stance by looking for new solutions. Nevertheless, most of them began to go beyond traditional measures and offered creative solutions only after understanding that the pandemic would continue for a long time. It was only then that they stated that the distance learning format would remain in effect until the end of the school year.

Far from simply implementing federal initiatives and meeting preset indicators of effectiveness, successful regions took individual approaches and launched their own initiatives in which education was embedded into socioeconomic policy. Regions with less initiative that managed education on a day-by-day basis without a global strategy, simply reacting to federal initiatives, were much worse off. The interaction between different levels of education management during the pandemic shows that regions with a lot of initiative should be given extensive freedom in the use of federal resources for digitization. Instead of trying to control all processes, the federal government should let regions, municipalities, and schools take the initiative and build their own horizontal ties. Unified solutions should be implemented with the help of a mechanism of target support aimed at reducing interregional differentiation.

Another major new international trend of education management is to base managerial decisions on a broad range of educational and contextual data, including data that has not been used up until now. This data comes from the domains of healthcare, culture, finances, and demographics. The publication and analysis of such data has led to the emergence of a new field that may be called "evidence-based education," which is analogous to the field of evidence-based medicine. Some management models (e.g., the model of online extracurricular education) can be implemented only after analyzing certain indicators and sets of indicators. Unfortunately, no such transition has occurred in Russian education so far. In contrast to many other countries, Russia has published no open statistics about the incidence rate of the pandemic among school-age children that could serve as guidelines for converting schools to distance learning, nor has it conducted detailed studies of losses in education quality.

Decisions on organizing the work of the education system in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic were made in conditions of considerable uncertainty about the nature of the disease, the magnitude of the risks, and the role of schools and students in spreading the infection as well as about the impact of school closures on the quality of education and the wellbeing of children. Our analysis shows that this uncertainty existed in Russia both during the initial stage of the pandemic and during the period between the first and second waves. Its impact on losses in education quality and student wellbeing has yet to be determined. Nevertheless, a key lesson of the pandemic is that one must learn to plan in the conditions of continued uncertainty to implement both education response and education recovery measures. One must keep track of the growing experience in this domain in the country and the world particularly with regards to the effectiveness of education response and education recovery in Russian regions and other countries.

Building an evidence-based education management system for effectively responding to the challenges of the current pandemic and possible similar challenges in the future with the help of digital instruments should become a national priority. This would greatly simplify the work of schools in the event of a new wave of COVID-19 as well as solving the problems that flared out in 2020 before they become endemic.

**Fig. 9.11** Results of hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (Subjective wellbeing before school closures in the spring of 2020)

# **Appendix 9.1**

WLSMV algorithm; χ2 = 857.248; df = 37; p = 0.000; CFI = 0.98; TLI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.05; 90% confidence interval [0.052; 0.058]; SRMR = 0.03 (Fig. 9.11).

# **Appendix 9.2**

WLSMV algorithm; χ2 = 1186.103; df = 37; p = 0.000; CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.06; 90% confidence interval [0.062; 0.068]; SRMR = 0.035 (Fig. 9.12).

**Fig. 9.12** Results of hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (Subjective wellbeing at the time of the survey in November–December 2020)

# **Appendix 9.3**

See Table 9.2.

# **Appendix 9.4**

See Table 9.3.

 *PISA 2018 Results*. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm

**Sergey Kosaretsky** Director of the Pinsky Centre for General and Extracurricular Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. PhD in educational psychology. He is an expert in the field of inequity in general and extracurricular education, school effectiveness, educational reforms. He participated in projects of OECD, UNICEF, World Bank. He is a member of the Expert Council on Education Issues by the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

**Sergey Zair-Bek** Leading Expert at the Pinsky Centre for General and Extracurricular Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. He worked in the Ministry of education of Russian Federation as a Vice-director of the Department of Education Development from 2001 to 2006 and as an international expert of World Bank in Central Asia from 2008 to 2013. The main research interests are national educational policy and regional strategies for education reforms, institutional behavior of educational systems, management in education.

**Kersha Yuliya** Junior Research Fellow at the Pinsky Centre for General and Extracurricular Education, postgraduate student and lecturer at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Yuliya works in the field of sociology of education. Main research interests are social inequality, stratification, and life-long trajectories.

**Roman Zvyagintsev** Junior Research Fellow at the Pinsky Centre for General and Extracurricular Education, postgraduate student and lecturer at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. The main research interests are educational inequality, school academic resilience, school effectiveness and educational poverty.

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# **Chapter 10 Science, Social Responsibility, and Education: The Experience of Singapore During the COVID-19 Pandemic**

# **Oon Seng Tan and Jallene Jia En Chua**

**Abstract** In this chapter we first outline how the pandemic unfolded United Kingdom before highlighting the key thinking and strategies Singapore adopted in policy responses towards the crisis. The two key principles of Singapore's approach, science, and social responsibility, contributed greatly to its success in handling the public health crisis. This chapter will elaborate on these principles and examine how these policies were carried out in the educational realm. We look at how Singapore relied on its strengths of proactive rational planning and execution to facilitate the transition to home-based learning (HBL) and the subsequent re-opening of schools. Concomitant with policies to address health and well-being for all students were strategies to ensure continuity of learning, student engagement, and innovation in the new learning environment. The use of online learning portals such as the Student Learning Space enabled all students from primary to pre-university levels to have equal access to quality curriculum resources. Professional development and preparation of teachers pertaining to facilitating new modes of learning were as important as implementation measures. Given the unexpected impact of the pandemic and the need for scalability there were also many challenges to ensure equitable access and holistic well-being for vulnerable groups of students. Looking forward, we discuss the implications of the pandemic on Singapore's education scene, such as how it elevated core issues related to curriculum, pedagogy, and design of learning environments. We talk about opportunities for some of these issues to be addressed in policy and research, and how doing so can better build an adaptable education system for the twenty-first century.

J. J. E. Chua e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
O. S. Tan (B) · J. J. E. Chua

Centre for Research in Child Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
# **10.1 Introduction**

Singapore is a small island nation with an estimated population of 5.7 million people. Being a small country, it is governed by a central government and thus policies and measures are often applied consistently nationwide. As a combination of a public health crisis, an economic recession, and a prolonged period of social isolation (Golberstein et al., 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on Singapore's economy, disrupted many Singaporeans from their regular routines, and brought about physical, mental, and financial challenges for many. However, Singapore's policy response to the crisis has been noteworthy, and widely lauded to have been prompt and resilient, yet flexible. By January 2021, Singapore had announced the implementation of Phase 3 (Ministry of Health, 2020), the third and last phase of the reopening of Singapore's businesses and public spaces ever since the country exited its lockdown phase in June 2020. In this chapter, we discuss the key principles of Singapore's policy response to the crisis highlighting science and social responsibility, and further examine how these principles were applied to policies in the educational context. We then discuss challenges, implications for the education system, and opportunities for research and policy.

# **10.2 Unfolding of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Singapore**

This section provides some context of the COVID-19 pandemic timeline unfolding in Singapore in 2020 (see Fig. 10.1). Singapore's first imported COVID-19 case (a 66-year-old Chinese national) was reported on January 23, 2020, followed by a couple more imported cases in the following days. At this point in time, locals went about their daily lives as per usual, with little concern of the threat of the virus as there was still no evidence of transmission within the local community. Only after local transmission was first reported on February 3 did the COVID-19 pandemic start to reach national attention in Singapore. On February 7, Singapore raised its national risk assessment level, known as the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level, from "yellow" to "orange" to alert of the possibility of a local pandemic. This led to heightened public awareness of the virus, and triggered reactions of fear such as panic buying at supermarkets to stock up on necessities. In late March, many Singaporeans abroad returned home, causing a spike in imported cases. This was followed by a massive outbreak in foreign workers' dormitories and a fast-increasing number of new and unlinked community cases. In response to this, the Singapore government carried out a stringent set of lockdown measures from April 7 to May 4, officially known as the "circuit breaker". The circuit breaker was subsequently extended for another four weeks to June 1. During the circuit breaker, all schools and non-essential workplaces were closed, and all gatherings with family or friends who did not live together were banned.

After the circuit breaker, Singapore slowly moved towards reopening of workplaces, schools, and businesses via three phases. Phase 1 of reopening lasted for about three weeks, where some activities beyond the essential services were allowed to resume progressively (e.g., hairdressing services beyond haircuts, bookshops, and motor vehicle servicing). Phase 2 lasted for about 6 months and allowed for dining in with a 5-person limit, as well as the reopening of other services like retail. On December 28, Singapore transitioned into its third and final phase of reopening, increasing the public gathering and home visiting limit from 5 people to 8. The government also introduced free vaccinations for all Singaporeans and long-term residents.

# **10.3 Operating on Science and Government-Wide Approach**

Taking a government-wide approach entails different ministries coming together to achieve policy coherence and synergy. Using such an approach, Singapore's priorities during the crisis were to protect the lives of all citizens and to ensure economic livelihood and future readiness. Singapore's stance and approach towards handling the COVID-19 pandemic have been based on two key principles: science and social responsibility. First, management of the crisis was driven by science, where implementation of any policies and measures was informed by data and scientific evidence. For example, the science of infectious diseases tells us about the danger of virus noncontainment, where cases can increase at an exponential rate if uncontrolled. Thus, from the beginning, Singapore prioritized the health and safety of its citizens by being proactive and decisive with rolling out containment measures. As early as the start of January 2020, when news of the virus outbreak in Wuhan were first reported, Singapore had already begun screening measures at Changi Airport for incoming travelers from the region and issued health advisories for the general public. On January 31, Singapore was the first country in Southeast Asia to ban new visitors of any nationality with recent travel to mainland China. This demonstration of early preparation and precaution can be contrasted with many countries who did not start preparation until the virus had already entered their country.

Over the various stages of the pandemic, Singapore swiftly and decisively adapted to new changes in scientific evidence and information on the situation on the ground. As more was known about the transmission of COVID-19 itself, Singapore implemented measures based on such evidence. COVID-19 was found to be transmitted via respiratory droplets and close contact, thus Singapore established a deep cleaning campaign at public places called SGclean to minimize contamination, as well as introduced stringent isolation measures to minimize contact. When imported cases were on the rise, Singapore imposed stay-home and quarantine orders for incoming travelers, with strict penalties for non-compliance. When the number of unlinked community cases spiked, Singapore implemented the circuit breaker to prevent the virus from spreading further within the community. After discontinuing the circuit breaker, the Singapore government remained cautious and methodical in its approach and reopened Singapore in deliberate phases that minimized mingling, keeping the number of cases under control. To accommodate the increased public movement after reopening, the government also implemented digital systems such as SafeEntry and TraceTogether to facilitate efficient contact tracing efforts. Later, COVID-19 was also found to present as asymptomatic in certain people, thus Singapore engaged in aggressive testing of high-risk populations (e.g., hawkers, early childhood staff, incoming travelers, foreign workers living in dormitories), successfully detecting asymptomatic cases (e.g., Toh, 2020; Yong, 2020) and significantly reducing the spread of the virus.

# **10.4 Emphasizing Social Responsibility**

Singapore also emphasized the importance of social responsibility throughout the pandemic. Exercising social responsibility in this time meant ensuring the care and safety of others in the community. Many measures were based on this principle, where people who may be more vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 were given the protection or precautionary advice needed. For example, frontline workers were supplied with adequate virus protection like suits and masks, and the elderly were given priority shopping hours and queues at supermarkets to reduce their exposure in public. Social responsibility was also a consistent narrative used in laying out precautionary guidelines and rules for the public, such as maintaining one-meter distances, staying home when unwell, and always wearing masks–it was emphasized that these measures should be taken to protect our loved ones and others.

These principles of science and social responsibility were also at the heart of educational policies during the pandemic. Education in Singapore is centralized and governed by the Ministry of Education (MOE), where there are about 350 primary and secondary schools and a half of a million students enrolled. COVID-19 related measures implemented by the MOE were also driven by science and strongly aligned with those implemented and advised by the Ministry of Health (MOH). This was made possible by the highly centralized political model on which Singapore operates, where all government ministries have a strong line of communication with each other, allowing for swift and consistent implementation across the health and education sectors. As one of the smallest nations in the world, centralization works well and can be executed successfully in a coherent, government-wide manner. In comparison, contention between health and education responses were more prominent in other larger countries in this book (e.g., United States, Spain) and worldwide.

When Singapore's MOH raised the DORSCON level to "orange" on February 7, implementation of precautionary measures at multiple ministry levels followed promptly after. On the same day, MOE issued a press release to step up precautionary measures in schools (Ministry of Education, 2020e). Large group and communal activities such as assemblies, camps, and mass celebrations were to be suspended, recess times in schools were to be staggered, and co-curricular activities or afterschool programs could only continue in smaller groups. Any inter-school activities were also suspended. This was in the first term (quarter) of the academic year and these measures were set to be in place tentatively until the end of the March holidays, which is a week-long break in March for students after the first term.

After the March holidays, it was further announced that hygiene and precautionary measures in schools were to be enhanced. All co-curricular activities and inter-school activities continued to be suspended or deferred until further notice. All schools were to adopt cleaning and safe-distancing practices, such as fixed exam-style seating for Primary 3 students and above (where students sit individually with spaces in between their desks), and fixed group cluster seating for Primary 1 and 2. There were also wipe-down routines in classrooms and cafeterias as well as assigned seating and play areas in other parts of the schools. On March 24, a joint statement between MOE and the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs (MSF) was released to announce additional precautionary measures for younger students from preschool and primary school (Ministry of Education, 2020b); students staying in the same household as a person who had returned to Singapore from any country were to be placed on a 14-day Leave of Absence (LOA).

After the circuit breaker, school measures were also in line with the three phases of reopening. In Phase 1, only graduating cohorts from primary and secondary schools attended school physically from Mondays to Fridays, whereas students from other cohorts rotated weekly between home-based learning (HBL) and returning to school for lessons to reduce the number of students in schools at any one time. From Phase 2 onwards, all students returned to school from Mondays to Fridays. There was also resumption of PE lessons and co-curricular activities with the assurance that staff and students continue to strictly adhere to safety management measures.

These cautiously controlled measures of precaution and safety proved to be effective in protecting our students from contracting COVID-19. As of December 2020, only about 0.23% of COVID-19 cases in Singapore were children or adolescents aged 20 and below (Covid19 SG, 2020), of which none caught the virus from schools or institutes of learning. These cases mainly caught the virus from overseas or from household members who were overseas, suggesting that the LOA precautionary measure was indeed a sound policy and helped prevent further spread amongst younger students.

However, although children and young adolescents are less likely to contract COVID-19 or have their physical health directly impacted by the virus (Davies et al., 2020; Viner et al., 2020), they risk suffering major detriments to their learning and development during this time. Disruptions to learning, such as cancellations of classes, lectures, and national examinations, will put the education of affected students on hold for a long time. On a larger scale, this poses significant problems to logistics in subsequent years, such as catching up for all the missed lessons or having the size of two or even more cohorts sit for a national examination at once. Singapore was cognizant of such supply-chain shifts or unforeseen consequences of disrupted learning–not just for students themselves, but for the entire education system. Thus, on top of protecting the health and safety of students from the virus, minimizing disruptions to learning was of the utmost importance. This emphasis was reflected in how strategies to ensure continuity of learning, student engagement, and innovation in the new learning environment were employed in conjunction with health and safety measures.

# **10.5 Minimizing the Loss of Learning and Seizing Opportunities for Teachable Moments**

One way Singapore and MOE helped to maintain continuity of learning for their students was through helping them and teachers ease into home-based learning (HBL) during the circuit breaker. Before the circuit breaker started, MOE had implemented one day of HBL a week for schools, in anticipation of the possibility of a nationwide lockdown and full-time HBL. This allowed schools to progressively transition to the online learning model, and for teachers and students to familiarize themselves with the system. This methodical process allowed for a gradual adjustment into full-time HBL instead of an instantaneous switch that could cause confusion, unpreparedness, and backlashes to students' learning. When the circuit breaker was announced to be extended for another month to June 1, the academic calendar was also readjusted to accommodate this change. The month-long mid-year school holidays, originally scheduled in the month of June every year, was brought forward to the month of May to coincide with the second month of circuit breaker. This helped to minimize any loss of learning days at school. Ultimately, Singapore students only missed about a month of physical lessons at school, and even so, learning was maintained through homebased and online means during this month. The education ministry also took the opportunities to prepare teachers with resources about the science of the COVID-19 virus and the importance of health and hygiene practices. Schools also capitalized on the principle of social responsibility and emphasized educating students on the need for social distancing, isolation of infected persons, and strategies of controls such as screening and contact tracing. These were also opportunities to build resilience and highlight exemplary care of others through responsibilities and courage.

# **10.6 Use of Technology: Student Learning Space**

In addition, Singapore utilized innovative tools to help sustain student engagement and motivation under significant changes to the learning environment and mode. With HBL, replicating the traditional classroom onto an online medium (e.g., videorecording lessons as if they were face-to-face) may seem contrived and may no longer be as effective or engaging. The biggest challenge here was the ability to capitalize on online tools to offer better learning opportunities for students (Ng, 2020). On this front, Singapore tapped into its pre-existing national online learning portal, the Student Learning Space (SLS), as a learning and teaching platform for teachers and students during the circuit breaker.

SLS is a learning management system containing curriculum-aligned resources for various subjects and is made accessible to all teachers and students. On SLS, teachers can share relevant lesson resources and students can access them in a self-directed manner (Ministry of Education, 2020d). Students can approach various topics at their own pace and based on their own interests, encouraging personalized learning and greater student ownership. Resources also come in different forms, such as videos, animations, simulations, podcasts, and visual texts (Ministry of Education, 2020c). Using this wide variety of forms and additional tools on SLS (e.g., installing pop up questions to make students' thinking processes visible or embedding YouTube videos for demonstration), teachers can combine and curate resources in their preferred delivery, and customize them to students' needs.

Aside from lesson materials, testing materials like quizzes and activities are also available on the SLS, where students can self-assess their knowledge and obtain immediate feedback on their performance. Teachers can also monitor their students' progress on their learning and assessments, both at a class and individual level. This enables them to make informed decisions when providing targeted intervention to address any gaps in understanding. Thus, besides serving as a resource bank, SLS is also an adaptive and interactive platform that streamlines and enhances the distancelearning process by allowing customizability, individualized learning, and engaging exchanges between students and teachers.

SLS proved to be a useful tool for the HBL period during the pandemic. With many teaching resources such as lesson plans and curriculum resources already on SLS, it was easier for teachers to launch into online teaching without the need to transfer many physical materials themselves. SLS complemented the online video conferencing platforms teachers used to carry out online lessons such as Zoom and Google Meet, as well as external resources such as textbooks and workbooks, offering students a flexible learning experience that may be more engaging and effective in a home-based environment (Gov.sg, 2020; Teng & Ang, 2020). Nonetheless, teachers' IT savviness was a crucial factor for the success of SLS and HBL. This could not have been achieved without ICT being a significant component of the learning technologies that Singapore teachers are equipped with from pre-service to in-service professional development. In addition, ever since the SARS pandemic in 2003, schools scheduled their own e-learning weeks or activities yearly as a routine for teachers to re-acquaint themselves with educational technology and remain prepared in the event where virtual learning is needed. Thus, teachers were generally very equipped with the technological skills needed for virtual learning before COVID-19, making it easier to mount an initiative for home-based learning during the pandemic.

# **10.7 Professional Development and the Co-Sharing Teacher Community**

Even so, Singapore ramped up e-learning professional development (PD) for teachers even further during the pandemic. From the moment Singapore had its first local case, the Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST) starting proliferating PD courses to provide support for teachers in navigating the digital space and implementing online HBL. Thus, on top of e-pedagogy guidance already offered to all teachers, AST increased the number of PD sessions on the MOE Student Learning Space to support teachers through this new challenge. Although e-learning has been part of Singapore schooling since SARS, the national circuit breaker during COVID-19 posed an additional unprecedented challenge for teachers that was not present during the SARS pandemic. During the SARS pandemic, school closures lasted for a maximum of 1 week, whereas during the height of COVID-19, school closure extended for a prolonged period of one month.

AST provided PD guidance on two main areas: planning and design, and creation of e-learning resources and packages. For the former, AST organized learning sessions, webinars, and workshops to guide teachers on how to plan for and design seamless school and HBL experiences for students. For example, webinars were organized for Mathematics teachers to share lesson planning examples that took HBL considerations such as student HBL readiness into account. For Science, workshops to design blended learning experiences that are seamless and meaningful for students were conducted, encouraging dialogue between participants so that they could share lesson ideas with each other and further refinements and enactments could be done with the guidance of facilitators. For Humanities, different ICT tools that could be used to enhance the learning experience were shared with and amongst teachers.

Similar courses were implemented to guide teachers in creating effective elearning resources and packages. For Humanities, MOE hosted workshops to provide guidance to teachers to create e-lessons on the Student Learning Space, highlighting student engagement, effective assessment for learning, and depth of the subject. However, perhaps what is most valuable from these PD opportunities is the fact that it sparked creativity, community engagement, and the effective exchange of tips, advice, and support amongst teachers themselves. Many learning designers and teachers have come together to share how they design learning environments using ICT tools and have made their own creations available through open-source platforms for other teachers. For example, a group of teachers co-created a digital game undergirded by self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) to support teaching of "Hypothesis Testing", an A-Level Mathematics topic. The resource was made available for use to all teachers teaching A-Level Mathematics. For Science, members of Networked Learning Communities co-created and shared resources suitable for use for HBL. Teachers and professionals brought together by their passion for high quality education and continued learning for their students amidst challenging times was indeed a heartening sight.

# **10.8 Challenges of Learning for Vulnerable Groups**

Despite efforts to create equal learning opportunities for all students during the pandemic, Singapore faced many challenges in ensuring equitable access for vulnerable groups of children. For example, during the circuit breaker and HBL period, fault lines in the digital space started to emerge between children from higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. While the SLS was meant to be a platform for all students to have equal access to learning resources, some children from disadvantaged backgrounds did not have digital devices readily available in their homes to access the portal. For example, the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study (SG Leads) found that 44% of vulnerable families living in rental flats1 do not have a computer or laptop at home, as compared to 4% for those from higher-SES families living in private properties. This figure is 54% and 11% respectively for tablets (Yeung, 2020).

Besides the availability of devices, there are also a variety of other factors that determine the extent to which students can reap the benefits of HBL, such as physical environment, parental skills, and connectivity issues (Lee, 2020). Even with digital devices, many low-income households also lacked the appropriate infrastructure and environment at home that are conducive for HBL. For example, many did not have their own Wi-Fi subscriptions at home, including 8% of families in rental flats (Yeung, 2020), or enough tables and chairs for all children to use, resulting in less ideal workspaces like the floor or kitchen. Many also had to share small spaces with other household members, which can be distracting and inhibit students from focusing. For example, rental flats are usually one or two rooms, with a small living space of 36 sq m to 45 sq m, yet 40% of SG Leads families living in rental flats have five or more household members squeezing within that small space (Yeung, 2020). Such space constraints may cause friction and impact children's concentration and learning. Another vulnerable group of students is children with special needs. Many require face-to-face support for behavioral, emotional, or learning needs, and thus many struggled during this time with absence of additional support. Children whose parents work in essential services also lacked caregiving and supervision during this period.

For such students who may fall through the cracks, Singapore was less prepared in terms of having measures already in place. This is possibly because of the quick and unexpected turn of events into a lockdown phase, and the pressing need for scaling up home-based education (i.e., preparing all students and teachers as a whole). Nonetheless, Singapore was quick to adapt and rolled out supportive measures once issues came to light. Children who did not have alternative care arrangements, or who might need additional school support such as access to digital devices or regular face-to-face engagement, were allowed to continue going to school during the circuit

1 In Singapore, families' SES can be roughly identified by their housing types. The most vulnerable families from low SES backgrounds live in rental units by the Housing Development Board (HDB), whereas the most advantaged families from high SES backgrounds live in private properties like condominiums and landed properties.

breaker and had adults available to supervise and support them. In addition, MOE loaned about 12,500 laptops or tablets to students, as well as 1,200 Internet-enabling devices to students who did not have enough devices at home for HBL (H. M. Ang, 2020). Some corporate telecommunications companies such as StarHub also sponsored students in need with free computer hardware and cables and Internet subscriptions (J. Ang, 2020). Primary and secondary school students on MOE's Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) can also benefit from subsidies under the School Meals Program (SMP), which was originally set up to provide subsidies for meals purchased from the school cafeteria and consumed in school. During the circuit breaker period, these meal subsidies continued to be extended to these students regardless of whether they returned to school during this time (Ministry of Education, 2020a).

# **10.9 Lessons Learned and Future Implications**

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been an unfortunate occurrence, there are silver linings and lessons that arose from the situation. Firstly, the pandemic has accelerated a shift in mode of learning, where many are starting to consider hybrid learning as a possible way of learning for the future. Hybrid learning combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional classroombased instructional methods. To incorporate the "online" aspect into learning, the use of digital and online devices as tools is key. In general, there has been a lack of adoption of education technology solutions in schools in Singapore (Hutton, 2020). For example, although the SLS was implemented in 2018 and therefore existed before the pandemic, Singapore had never fully utilized it on a scalable basis; it was viewed more as an additional outlet for information rather than being integrated more extensively in day-to-day teaching and learning in school. Its extensive uptake and utilization were subsequently necessitated and expedited by the pandemic. This acceleration is also mirrored on the policy level, where the government has made plans to strengthen measures related to digital learning. For example, a government plan to roll out personal laptops or tablets for all secondary school students has been adopted seven years prior, to 2021 (Yuen, 2020). This is with hope of keeping social mobility alive, allowing all students to access and benefit from learning in the online and digital domains.

Secondly, the pandemic has also catalyzed a shift of the learning paradigm in Singapore from a more traditional one-size-fits-all approach, to one that is more differentiated and customized based on each student's learning needs, interests, and capabilities. This allows for learning and teaching that is more targeted and effective in fulfilling each child's specific potential. The blended learning model allows for flexibility in learning, especially during home-based components. Therefore, students who are excelling within the main curriculum can have independent time during home-based learning to learn about and pursue other things that pique their interest. Materials and resources can also be recalibrated for students to target specific gaps in learning.

We envisage that the above shifts will translate into practical and policy implications in Singapore's education system in the future. We observed that education in Singapore generally tended to be rather conservative in adapting to the changes and demands of the twenty-first century. The pandemic catalyzed discussions to consider many of these potential changes as viable and have made people more accepting to embrace new ways of education. In June 2020, for example, Singapore's ex Minister of Education, Mr. Ong Ye Kung, voiced that HBL is set to be a regular part of schooling past COVID-19 (Davie, 2020), hinting at a shift towards hybrid or blended learning. Later, in December 2020, it was announced that secondary school and junior college students will spend 2 days a month doing HBL starting from the third term of 2021 (Ng, 2020). This signals that more educational shifts will be approaching. These shifts would not have been so quick to arrive without the pandemic. Because of the pandemic-initiated shifts, we speculate that many larger educational issues will arise both in Singapore and around the world, impacting different aspects of the education system such as curriculum, pedagogy, and structure. For Singapore, this may allow it to transform to be more aligned with the demands and trends of the twenty-first century.

# *10.9.1 Curriculum*

Firstly, paradigm shifts in learning involve reconsidering curriculum design in new learning environments. Curriculum design in Singapore has its roots in the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution, where knowledge is largely taught within an analytical framework. Subjects are broken down into smaller modules and taught quite often in isolation or with little relation with each other in a check-list manner. Curriculum in Singapore should be redesigned to incorporate the connectivity and relativity between subjects, so that students at pre-university levels can understand how certain subjects and topics are interconnected, which will support learning at the university stage and beyond. For example, subjects that are interfaces between rudimentary subjects (e.g., biochemistry as an interface between biology and chemistry) can be introduced before university at primary and secondary levels, rather than solely at the university level. Interdisciplinary curriculum should be more pervasive within all levels of education.

The drive towards independent and self-directed learning also supports a shift away from the analytical framework. One of the goals of twenty-first century education is to instill the spirit of life-long learning, and the effects of the education system are meant to last for life. With this in mind, learning and its benefits will vary for everyone, and thus the standardized, module-based curriculum style of the analytical framework may start to lose relevance. At a conference by the Institute of Policy Studies in January 2021, Singapore's Education Minister Mr. Lawrence Wong raised a similar point aligned with this thinking. He mentioned that Singapore will make fundamental shifts in its model of education and mindsets as part of post-pandemic plans, such as preventing "front-load learning when someone is young", or treating "education as a conveyor belt for the job market" (Wong, 2021). This means that education should be viewed less as an end to secure a good job, but rather as a system to cultivate life-long learning habits and skills that are healthy, enjoyable, and beneficial for each student. The current analytical framework is less adept at doing this.

Instead, there is a need to retool curriculum design from a thematic approach, preparing students for society and the workforce as adults by instilling the skills and habits required. This is especially true since the requirements in the workforce have also evolved since the nineteenth and twentieth century. Rather than a strong emphasis on academic excellence, there is an even greater need for overarching skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and innovation. Apart from the core subjects and fundamental skill development, curriculum design should encompass the necessary skills and knowledge for students to take on larger, real world related issues in the future such as climate change, digitalization and automation, and artificial intelligence.

# *10.9.2 Pedagogy*

Secondly, paradigm shifts also force us to reconsider pedagogical methods. Educational pedagogy in Singapore is still largely teacher-directed, despite some shifts towards student-oriented engagement and activities. Although research and theories in the past that focused on improving instruction and teaching from the teacher's perspective were useful for effective didactics, new ecologies of learning are emerging where experiential and collaborative learning are even more important for developing twenty-first century skills. With the new learning environments, such as online learning or independent learning at home, pedagogical methods need to be much more facilitative and less didactical. Thus, it is likely that the education system will transform to incorporate and accept education that is more genuinely studentcentered, where learning is highly personalized and flexible. Instead of having activities curated for them, students can create their own activities and direct their own learning based on their interests and strengths. This will also open opportunities for project-based and problem-based learning, where students direct their own learning with each other, and learn with and from one another. Teachers then take on design, facilitatory, and coaching roles rather than instructive ones.

# *10.9.3 Structure*

Lastly, the structure of the academic or school life may also start to transform to be more fluid. Currently in Singapore, schools follow a fixed timetable and structure that students heed. For example, lessons are often organized in 40-min blocks. With the introduction of the hybrid learning model, the same structure in a physical, school setting might not be as replicable in the online realm. Thus, it is likely that while phyysical schooling may maintain some sort of structure and rigidity in its scheduling and planning to maintain order, adaptations need to be made when students are doing home-based, online learning, as the demands and environment are different at home. For example, it may be difficult for students to sit for 40-min blocks at home looking at a screen, as it is easier to disengage online than in real life. There are also fewer disciplinary agents at home as compared to in school.

Beyond our Singapore case and looking across cases in this book and worldwide, our postulation is that future shifts in the education systems around the world may embrace further structure, curriculum, and pedagogy changes which in some ways can be captured more broadly in Table 10.1, shown.

To accommodate these potential implications and transformations in the education system, research is required to ensure the smooth changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and academic structure. Initially, more research is required to understand learning in the online environment. In particular, it is crucial to answer key research questions revolving around students' and teachers' online learning and teaching behaviors and styles. For example, is there a deficit in learning when learning is done online? If

**Table 10.1** Our view of the potential educational shifts both in Singapore and globally post COVID-19

so, what are the mechanisms behind these deficits (e.g., engagement, motivation, lack of discipline)? Upon understanding the key mechanisms and outcomes, we can design online learning and tools that mitigate these. More research is also needed to test new pedagogical methods for teachers, considering the shifting role of the teacher from a didactic position to a more facilitatory figure. What is the best way to design the learning environment for students in these new environments? How do we prepare our teachers to do so? What are the skills and knowledge necessary for our teachers to become facilitators and designers rather than instructors? Teachers need to know new methods to engage students online, as well as be able to facilitate peer to peer discussions both online and offline as we move towards an increasingly project-based education style.

Ultimately, these movements in the education system need to be well supported by policy. Measures need to be in place to prepare for these movements. A couple of issues merit policy attention here. Firstly, with the widespread use of the internet and online tools, we need online infrastructure that is secure and accessible for all. Secondly, with possible changes to the way we perceive curriculum, pedagogy, academic structure, and learning environments in the future, there are needs for interdisciplinary experts beyond education to support these changes. We need to draw on the art and science of learning from education, psychology, neuroscience, and educational technology to understand how people learn best in differentiated situations and new environments. New policies, guidelines, practices, and measures need to be explored with participation and contributions from educators and students. As many parents and teachers are from older generations and are used to traditional education methods, there should be adequate guidance on how to transition into using digital devices and platforms, such as using workshops or community partnerships. Transitions should be as smooth as possible to alleviate anxiety and to motivate the public to accept and embrace these changes positively.

Lastly, education should not forget its narrative and promise for educating our future generations, which is that "no child is left behind". For Singapore, the pandemic and HBL experiences have shown us that in the context of new learning environments, we are still inadequately prepared to support vulnerable groups of children to have equal access to learning opportunities. During the same conference mentioned above, Mr. Lawrence Wong also mentioned striving towards a fairer and more equal society as one of three "resets" we must adopt in post-pandemic Singapore (Wong, 2021). Regarding education, he endorsed the distribution of more resources to schools with a larger proportion of students from lower-income families or disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., deploying more allied educators, such as counsellors and student welfare officers to support these students), as well as intervening early and uplifting children from birth and early childhood as key policy movements. We recommend that such policy movements should also consider the types of post COVID-19 education shifts that might happen. For example, shifts to online/digital media and home-based learning means that more disadvantaged children will have to assess education from their home environment, where background and family factors may start to matter a lot more, as compared to attending school physically where other support systems are in place. Policies should consider how professional support can be best extended to disadvantaged students when they are learning from home.

Also important to note from a top-down approach is how the mental well-being of all children can be taken care of during such shifts to blended learning. During the circuit breaker, Tinkle Friend, a mental health helpline for primary school pupils received 208 more calls than the previous month, where many children were concerned with managing online schoolwork and losing their friends (Goh, 2020a). Similarly, Touchline, a helpline for youth-related issues experienced an increase in calls during the circuit breaker, and Limitless, a charity which helps youth with mental health issues, has also seen an increased demand for help (Goh, 2020b). Psychologists explain that children thrive on routine, so the disruptions brought about by the pandemic are stressful for many. Children and youth may also experience increased levels of anxiety related to COVID-19 issues, such as lack of personal space and family issues. While these trends were observed during the full-scale nationwide lockdown that has passed in Singapore, it is possible that mental health issues will continue to affect children and youth in Singapore in the future. The pandemic may be around for a long time, and the shifts towards the blended-learning model might further disrupt schooling routines or exacerbate issues of personal space and family issues when students stay at home for longer periods of time for home-based learning. There needs to be adequate systemic support to protect the well-being of our students and to help them through such shifts. From a long-term perspective, perhaps education needs to incorporate socio-emotional skills and awareness amongst students and encourage them to seek help if they face struggles within the home environment.

# **10.10 Conclusion and Remarks**

In conclusion, Singapore's principles of science and social responsibility undergird a successful management of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the same principles were applied to the education system. Science informed measures to protect the health and well-being of students, and strategies to ensure continuity of learning and engagement were also executed in a scientific and methodical manner. In schools, teachers also emphasized the importance of social responsibility during COVID-19.

Altogether, we perceive that some of these successes can be due to the unique attributes of Singapore's governance, which contains centralization, multi-ministry coherence, and a legacy of evidence-based policymaking, all in which were especially useful during the COVID-19 crisis. Existing systems and the types of education that occur daily before the pandemic also made swift responses possible. One example is how teacher education had already incorporated technological skill-building pre-COVID-19, as mentioned above. Another example is how the value of social responsibility is very much ingrained in our culture and total defense education,2 such that citizens do perceive the importance of social responsibility measures during the pandemic. There is also a strong trust in authority and compliance to rules and measures.

Although there are limits to a total centralization approach, such as lacking eyes on the ground to support those who fall through the cracks, the Singapore model does not hope to become entirely centralized. Instead, it aims to be uniquely balanced in all areas. Our political model is a balance between authoritarianism and democracy, or freedom and social constraint. Similarly, we hope to achieve a balance between centralization and decentralization, such that as we can support the nation as a whole, we are also able to efficiently identify and support those that are most vulnerable. For example, MOE moved towards a cluster management of schools in 2006, which is a move towards decentralization, but improved efficiency in systems on the ground.

Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has left an indelible mark on our lives, generating long-term changes for society and education. To prepare for future transformations, Singapore has many struggles to overcome. However, a beneficial consequence of the crisis is that the pandemic has made many related issues visible and thus accelerated the shift of Singapore's education system to become more suitable for the twenty-first century. We anticipate that the same kind of changes will also surface more broadly in education systems globally.

# **References**

2 Social Defense is one of the six pillars of Total Defense in Singapore. Social Defense emphasizes the need to build strong relationships across all groups in Singapore and the importance of staying strong and united during challenging times by looking out for each other without self-interest.

**Oon-Seng Tan** is Director of the Centre for Research in Child Development, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was a Chen Yidan Visiting Global Fellow at Harvard University in 2019. Professor Tan was the Director of the National Institute of Education (2014–2018) and previously worked at various levels of deanship and leadership in education where he saw the transformation of Singapore's education system. Professor Tan's expertise includes teacher education, leadership development, problem-based learning, and educational psychology. He has authored/edited more than 20 books and published over 150 scholarly articles in these fields. He is Lead-Editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Education (Routledge) and Editor-in-Chief of Educational Research for Policy & Practice (Springer). Professor Tan's keynotes include the National Science Foundation Distinguished Lecture, AERA Annual Meetings Presidential sessions, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science International symposium, and International Education Summits of Education Ministers. He has also been a consultant to World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, ADB and governments worldwide.

**Jallene Jia En Chua** is a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Psychology (First Class Honours) at the University College London, UK, and was conferred the Dean's List Award (Faculty of Brain Sciences) upon completion in recognition of her academic excellence. In 2018, she was the only recipient of the prestigious Professor Malcolm Grant Scholarship which allowed her to pursue a master's degree in Psychology of Education from the Institute of Education, University College London, United Kingdom. Her research interests focus on early childhood education, cognitive and social development in early childhood, parent–child interactions, as well as exploration and play.

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# **Chapter 11 The Spanish Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: From Joint Governance to Lack of Governance**

**Javier M. Valle and Carlos de Olagüe-Smithson**

**Abstract** On March 9, 2020, to safeguard the health of the population from the spread of COVID-19, the Autonomous Community of Madrid was the first region in Spain to suspend in person classroom activity from March 11th. Five days later, on March 14th, the Spanish government declared a state of emergency and in person classroom lessons were suspended throughout the country.

This chapter will analyze the Spanish national response to the pandemic, comparing the approaches of the 17 Spanish Autonomous Communities and focusing on the details of the first region to suspend classroom education, the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the capital.

In many cases, teachers and schools reacted quickly to try to maintain educational continuity for the students through self-instructional courses and procedures for distance learning. The public education administration did not promptly provide clear guidelines, in part due to the Spanish decentralized government structure. By April 2020, distance learning was already offered at most of schools.

In July 2020, the EvAU—the national state exam that provides access to university studies—was administered to students in person, following strict health care protocols including mandatory mask mandates, hand sanitizer at the entrance and exit of the classrooms, and a distance of 1.5 m between desks. The pandemic in Spain has fostered ICT skills in an unprecedented way. For example, teachers and students have embraced a new way of teaching and learning (with private platforms like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams). This development of ICT skills and a new focus on competences appears to have changed Spanish education in a never-before-seen way and might have a long-term impact.

J. M. Valle (B)

C. de Olagüe-Smithson

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
IES Pedro de Tolosa, c/Estudios 1, 28680 San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Madrid, Spain e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
# **11.1 Introduction Organization, Structure, and Legal Framework of the Spanish Education System**

After the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939–1978), Spain began a democratic process affecting all social and political domains. The education system, as part of this transformation, was reformed with laws proposed by different administrations representing different ruling parties and coallitions.1

With democracy established by the 1978 Constitution, it became essential to reform the system to align it with the new democratic political situation. These reforms, based on new constitutional values, opened the system to the principles of decentralization, democratization, and participation (Egido, 2005).

Before democratization, the educational system in Spain was one of the most centralized in Europe, but it was transformed to distribute the responsibility of education among the Central Government and the 17 autonomous regions—*Comunidades Autónomas*—(Autonomous Communities). According to the general framework of the central legislation, these territories have the authority to manage their respective region's educational system. Those territories which have an official regional language can use it as the language of instruction.

Many laws were oriented to modernize the educational system during the years after the approval of the 1978 Spanish Constitution. These laws were passed by different governments of the two main national political parties, advancing goals and norms of opposite orientation to guide the Spanish education system, which as a result experienced alternating changes introduced by administrations with different political orientations.

These education reforms began under the Socialist Party (1982–1996) with the University Reform Act (*Ley de Reforma Universitaria*, LRU) of 1983. This Act updated the Spanish University system and was based on three constitutional principles: the universal right to education, academic freedom, and the autonomy of universities. In 1985, the constitutionally recognized educational rights and liberties were regulated in stages, including tertiary education and University level by the Organic Act of Right to Education (*Ley Orgánica Reguladora del Derecho a la Educación,*LODE*).* This law attempted to democratize the management of educational institutions and establish school councils in educational institutions and autonomous communities, and at a national level. Furthermore, this law implicated one of the most repeated and controversial educational debates in Spain: the status, management, and funding of private schools. The Act upheld the right to create private educational institutions, which are private institutions that could receive public funding under certain conditions described in the law. As a result, private schools—mainly owned by the Catholic Church and culturally important since the nineteenth century—were among the academic institutions that could be financed by the State (Ossenbach, 1996). During the academic year 2019–2020, according to

1 Egido & Valle (2015) provide a detailed description of the recent history of education in Spain and summarize the main parts of its academic structure. An extended version of the following explanation can be found in the mentioned text.

official statistics regarding non-tertiary education, 5,381 out of 9,390 private schools were financed by the State, out of a total number of 19,149 schools.

In 1990, the transformations of the organization, administration, and management of the education system were complemented by the modification of the structure of all educational levels and their curricula by the Organic Act on the General Organization of the Educational System (*Ley Organica de Ordenación General del Sistema Educativo*, LOGSE). This law introduced an important structural change and a more flexible curriculum, inspired by the principles of constructivist educational theories. The law also extended universal compulsory education up to age sixteen, establishing a model with ten years of comprehensive education (de Olagüe-Smithson, 2019, p. 133).

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the conservative party (*Partido Popular*) introduced another set of reforms to the educational system. The Organic Act on Universities of 2001 (*Ley Orgánica de Universidades*, LOU) repealed the University Reform Act (LRU) and regulated the structure and organization of the educational system at the university level. The Act on Vocational Training and Professional Qualifications of 2002 modified the LOGSE concerning these modalities of education. Also in 2002, the Organic Act on Quality of Education (*Ley Orgánica de Calidad de la Educación*, LOCE), modified both the LODE and the LOGSE. The objective of the LOCE was to increase the quality and the performance of education. However, this law was not implemented due to a change in government which took place in 2004.

Upon the election of the new socialist government (2004–2011) the law was modified again in 2006 through the Organic Act on Education (*Ley Orgánica de Educación*, LOE), which regulated the Spanish non-university educational system until December 2013. Additionally, the Organic Act on Universities was amended to align the Spanish university education with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2007 (Organic law 4 of April 12, 2007, which modifies Organic Law 6 of December 21, 2001).

# **11.2 The Current Educational System in Spain**

After almost eight years of socialist government, the 2011 election gave the conservative party the absolute government majority. In December 2013, this new government approved the Act on the Improvement of the Quality of Education (*Ley Orgánica de Mejora de la Calidad Educativa*, LOMCE) to again modify the educational system. This law affected the levels below tertiary education, prioritizing the improvement of educational quality, the increase of youth employability, the modernization of vocational training, and the reduction of drop-out rates.2 Although this Act intended to modify the LOE of 2006 only slightly, the measures were strongly criticized across

2 Early leavers' rate was 31% in 2002; it remains in 17% in 2019, far from the European Union target for under 10% by 2020.

different sectors. The Act had no broad political consensus and was only supported by the government's majority party. Most of the opposition parties opposed the law.

In December 2020, the coalition government of the socialists and communists elected in 2019 passed the new Act "*Ley Orgánica 3*, 2020" (BOE, 2020).

These frequent changes to the legal framework constitute one of the main challenges for educational policy in Spain: the lack of stability and continuity resulting from an elusive education consensus between the main political parties in Spain. The resulting short policy cycles are seen as a problem by different education stakeholders including teachers' and parents' associations, but also academics and specialized media. For example, the President of the Spanish Federation of Public Schools Principals' Associations said that they deeply regret the lack of consensus in passing the new law of education, and they encourage political parties and educational communities to work together to avoid more reforms without consensus in the future.3

The abundance of education laws since 1990 (and their corresponding regulatory developments) and the continuous legislative changes and lack of policy continuity have produced teacher fatigue and confusion for parents and society. While politics often influences educational changes, in the case of Spain, these political fluctuations have resulted in a failure to achieve a national consensus and stability for education. It has not been possible to consolidate a stable regulatory framework, nor permanent laws, and consequently there has not been steady education development (Antiñolo, Molina, & Pérez, 2014).

However, despite the proliferation of educational laws, some characteristics of the educational system have remained relatively stable; some of the guidelines for the progress of Spanish education have remained unchanged over the last few decades. Two among these help understand the Spanish educational response to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) the educational administration model and (2) the overall organization of the different levels of education.

Concerning the school system administration model, powers and responsibilities are shared between the State and the Autonomous Communities. According to the Spanish Constitution, Article 139.1.30 (*Constitución* Española, 1978), the State is responsible for ensuring basic minimum program standards (curriculum and qualifications) across Spain and guaranteeing the educational rights of Spanish citizens. That is why the State plays the primary regulatory role on educational issues, but Autonomous Communities are uniquely responsible for the administration and organization of the educational system in their respective regions, save the powers reserved to the State. Autonomous Communities regulate school programs beyond the minimum structure and content determined by the State and handle school personnel, grants, and support services. Nevertheless, despite the changes meant to decentralize the educational system, local government authorities and individual schools play a limited role. Officially, schools have certain pedagogical, organizational, and managerial autonomy, but the decentralization process has not fully empowered these educational institutions. Spanish schools are characterized by

3 https://www.europapress.es/sociedad/educacion-00468/noticia-directores-instituto-lamentanfalta-consenso-aprobacion-ley-celaa-congreso-20201119165259.html.

limited autonomy, whereas most decisions are made by the educational administration. As a result, schools do not have the ability to effectively adapt to changing environments and policy priorities (Egido, 2005). In the pandemic context, schools have been paralyzed, without the autonomy to offer contextualized responses; they completely depended on the state and regional education authorities that offered slow and contradictory guidelines.

The structure of the educational system has remained relatively stable since 1990, despite the multitude of laws that have changed curriculum and school organization. The structure contains five levels: Infant Education, Primary Education, Compulsory Secondary Education, Upper Secondary Education and Higher Education. The first stage in the general educational system is Infant or Pre-primary Education and it is not compulsory. It has two levels: from age 0 to 3 and from age 3 to 6, the latter of which is free in all publicly funded schools. Primary Education is the first compulsory stage and lasts six years, between the ages of 6 and 12. Compulsory Secondary Education (*Educación Secundaria Obligatoria*, ESO) is the second compulsory stage and covers four school years, for pupils between the ages of 12 and 16. Together Primary Education and Compulsory Secondary Education constitute the "Basic Education", ten years of free and compulsory education for all students.

After compulsory education, pupils can access Upper Secondary Education that is also offered in Secondary Schools. It lasts two academic years, usually studied between the ages of 16 and 18. It is offered at Vocational Training integrated institutions and in national reference institutions, and it also offers two pathways: Bachillerato (mainstream branch of general upper secondary) and Intermediate Vocational Training (professional branch or technical upper secondary).

Finally, Higher Education includes university and non-university tertiary education. University studies, include Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral Degrees as established by the integration of Spain in the *European Higher Education Area* (EHEA). Non-university tertiary education includes Advanced Vocational Training and Specialized tertiary education. Although Spain's tertiary educational system consists of both university and non-university institutions, it operates—unlike other European systems—as a system primarily consisting of university institutions (OECD, 2009).

# **11.3 The Response to the Pandemic and the Impacts on Education**

On March 9, 2020, to safeguard the health of the population from the spread of COVID-19, the Autonomous Community of Madrid was the first region in Spain to establish extraordinary measures to handle the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020). One of the primary actions was the decision to suspend classroom activity at all levels, from formal education to its complementary educational activities. The regional government recommended resuming teaching online. Presuming a mitigated epidemic spread, schools were expected to reopen on March 26th.

On March 14th, the Spanish government with the Royal Decree 463/2020 declared a state of emergency to manage the health crisis created by COVID-19 (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 2020). Article 9 suspended face-to-face educational activity in all institutions and stages, cycles, degrees, courses, and academic levels included in article 3 of the Organic Law 2/2006 of Education (BOE, 2006), including university and all other teaching activities in public or private centers. During the suspension period, the educational activities were to be offered, if possible, remotely.

According to Zubillaga and Gortazar (2020) these measures affected nearly 10 million students in Spain and exacerbated problems in the Spanish educational system. The switch to online teaching was immediate and abrupt with no time for teachers to plan and design new learning procedures; it became an Emergency Remote Teaching experience, like the situation in other countries around the world (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020).

This sudden transition of the teaching model highlighted several systemic gaps (Fernández Enguita, 2020):

The Vice Councils of Education Policies and Organization of the Autonomous Community of Madrid published on March 10th instructions for the education centers to establish rules to continue with distance and online teaching (*VICE-CONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCA-TIVA* 2020, March 10). Seven instructions established that all personnel should continue attending the schools (except infant schools) and teleworking should be

4 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/15d70dc3-e00e-11e9-9c4e-01aa75ed7 1a1/language-en/format-PDF/source-171178208.

#### 11 The Spanish Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic … 289

promoted (as long as it was compatible with the continuation of the academic activities). The teachers should adapt their academic program to include home-based activities. The High Schools should pay special attention to students preparing the "*Evaluación del Bachillerato para el Acceso a la Universidad* (EBAU)," the Spanish official university entrance exam. Teachers maintained contact with students and parents through the Learning Management System LMS platform EducaMadrid, the schools' websites, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for education platform Roble, email, and other communication methods (including Google Classroom and WhatsApp).

Several teacher unions and labor organizations protested about these guidelines because they forced personnel to attend the schools without sufficient health protection measures. The following day, the Vice Councils published a modification "promoting teleworking," but did not comment on whether academic activities should be guaranteed (*VICECONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCATIVA*, 2020 B).

During the following weeks, institutions across the country discussed different teaching scenarios, but the direct responsibility for real time decisions was left to the school management boards, even though they were not legally entitled to it.

The schools supported their communities to lessen the impact of the sudden shortage of resources: e.g., donated cleaning material, used 3-D printers to make face protection equipment,5 and volunteered health care students at hospitals and elderly residences.

During this period, the Education Council of the State published two proposals: a brief list on March 20th and an extended version on April 7th (*Consejo Escolar del Estado*, 2020), which suggested two possible scenarios:

This is the scenario which was adopted. In this case, the Council urged the administration to provide tools to evaluate the students remotely. It also proposed to only consider academic performance in the first two trimesters (before the pandemic) to determine whether students had successfully completed level 4th ESO (last compulsory secondary education level) and 2nd Bachillerato (University studies entry level).

The Education Council of the State6 also recommended other provisions: EBAU university entrance exam: Establish common criteria among all Autonomous Communities about the structure and contents of the exam.

5 https://www.educaciontrespuntocero.com/noticias/profesores-fabrican-mascaras-protector as-3d/.

6 The Scholar Council of the State includes stakeholders in education. The council regularly analyzes the situation of education in Spain and offers its opinion.

Vocational Education and Training: The compulsory workplace learning should be reduced and substituted, if possible, by online alternatives.

Special Needs Education: The Councils recommended that the public administration provide measures to prevent infections, while increasing the material and human resources at these schools.

The Council urged the administration and the media to publicly recognize the efforts of the teachers, families, and students to maintain academic activities during the very complicated conditions created by the pandemic.

In Madrid, new instructions concerning the third trimester and the end of the school year were not published until April 21st (VICECONSEJERÍA DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA, 2020). In these instructions, the Autonomous Community of Madrid established that teaching should address all competencies and contents in the courses, including those planned to be taught during the third trimester, which contradicted with the recommendations of the Education Council of the State. Other autonomous communities did not focus on teaching new content and used the time to review previously taught skills and material.

Every April, evaluation exams of the last courses of primary and secondary education are carried out nationwide. In 2020, these exams were canceled (MEFP, 2020).

In May, the pandemic restrictions began to ease. Orders SND/399/2020 and SND/414/2020 of the Ministry of Health described the guidelines to limit risks. Two stages, Phase 0 and 1, established that in person classroom instruction could resume, but the orders did not mention specific rules for schools to follow. This situation created confusion in schools because there were no clear guidelines to follow.

On May 17th, Madrid published instructions to adapt education to the new situation (*VICECONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCATIVA*, 2020). These instructions transcribed the former orders of the Ministry of Health and made the principals of the schools responsible for the health protection of the academic community. However, once again, the instructions did not provide detailed rules to follow during classroom instruction, for example. The administration did not provide any extra resources to help schools adopt health protocols for in person instruction.

On May 22nd, new instructions for student and teacher examinations and evaluations were published (*DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA, FORMACIÓN PROFESIONAL Y RÉGIMEN ESPECIAL*, 2020). The deadline for these actions was June 16th.

At the end of May 2020, the health situation had improved, and the Autonomous Community of Madrid wanted to resume in person classroom education in June. The instructions from May 27th urged schools to organize support classes, mainly for students in 2nd Bachillerato that had to prepare the EBAU exam that would take place in July (originally planned for the beginning of June).

As mentioned, in Spain, the responsibility for educational matters has been transferred to the 17 Autonomous Communities. To try and set common policies and guidelines, the communities worked together with the national Ministry of Education and Vocational Education and Training in an advisory board named Sectorial Conference on Education. After the session held by this board on June 11th, on June 22nd, the Ministry established and published the measures for prevention, hygiene, and health promotion against COVID-19 at education centers for the school year 2020–2021 (MEFP, 2020 B).

This document had two objectives:

This document established four key guidelines:

According to that document, each center had to have a Plan for the Beginning of the School Year and a Contingency Plan. It proposed the creation of COVID-19 teams within schools with members from different areas (management board, cleaners, families, students) to ensure the accomplishment and communication of the key goals.

A 26-page document listed detailed measures that described how to implement these four key guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools. As mentioned before in this chapter, the Ministry for Education and Vocational Education and Training offered national guidelines, but the responsibility to act in Spanish education was transferred to the Autonomous Communities.

During the next few weeks, the speed of the political actions taken to implement these measures in each of the regions had a direct effect on the milestones for the next school year starting in September 2020 (Trujillo, 2020).

It is very difficult to consolidate the decisions of the different Autonomous Communities during the summer of 2020:

Each Autonomous Community published the definitive instructions that were to be considered by the schools to organize the school year at different times. There was also great variability in the dates when material and human resources would be made available to schools.

In the case of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, at the beginning of July 2020 the instructions (*VICECONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCATIVA*, 2020 B) established four possible scenarios:

Considering that in July, Madrid planned for Scenario I for the 2020–2021 school year, the schools' organization instructions were very similar to those published during previous non-COVID-19 school years (*VICECONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCATIVA*, 2020 C).

Several organizations noted the need to increase resources to guarantee health and teaching conditions during the coming school year. For example, ADIMAD, the Association of High School Principals in Madrid, mentioned it was impossible to guarantee distances of 1.5 m under the standard conditions and requested more teachers to handle the academic deficits created by the pandemic (Torres Benayas, 2020).

In Madrid, during July 2020, all the planning and organization of the new school year was done mainly under pre-pandemic conditions and with no useful increase of material and human resources.

In a press release on August 25th, the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid—Isabel Ayuso—informed that the new school year would start with Scenario II, and new material and human resources would be assigned (Ayuso, 2020). This announcement modified the initial instructions to increase protection measures, but this modified version still assumed Scenario I as the official starting situation (*VICE-CONSEJERÍAS DE POLÍTICA EDUCATIVA Y DE ORGANIZACIÓN EDUCATIVA*, 2020 D).

As result of the coordination with 17 Autonomous Communities, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Education and Training published the agreement to adopt public health coordinated actions during the 2020–2021 school year on August 27th (MEFP, 2020C).

Despite this agreement, the plans of the 17 Autonomous Communities had differences. Navarra, Castilla y León, and País Vasco continued offering 100% instruction in person while the remaining communities combined online teaching at different levels (Sánchez Caballero, 2020). ACADE, the Association of Private

**Table 11.1** COVID-19 funds

Schools, demanded similar criteria nationwide, eliminating region-specific guidelines (ACADE, 2020).

To increase the distance between students, smaller student groups were created, increasing demand for teachers throughout the country. This increase in the demand for teachers created a deficit in several regions that competed to attract human resources.

In September 2020, the Spanish Government transferred COVID-19 funds to each Autonomous Community to finance actions in education (*Ministerio* de Hacienda, 2020) (Table 11.1).

PROA + (20–21) was a national fund implemented to finance orientation, progress, and enrichment of education from the COVID\_19 emergency (Secretaría de Estado de Educación, 2020) (Table 11.2).

The extraordinary amounts assigned to education during the pandemic represent around 0.2% of the GDP. As a result, there has been an increase of the total Spanish education budget from 4.2 to 4.4% of the GDP (Consejo Escolar del Estado, 2021).

FEDADi, the Spanish Federation of Public Schools Principals' Associations, prepared a report in October 2020 that described the beginning of the school year in Spain (FEDADi, 2021). Nearly all the Autonomous Communities modified their

previsions from July. 60% of them changed the school year start date. Teaching was heterogenous, with different amounts of classroom and online teaching depending on the different communities and levels. In some regions, face-to-face teaching was authorized once lessons had already started, discriminating against schools that were not able to adapt. In nearly all cases, the administration had been in contact with the educators' associations, but in general it did not establish agreements with social stakeholders.

FEDADi notes that the number of teachers increased in most cases, reducing the student-to-teacher ratio. In some communities, it was very difficult to hire personnel for specific subjects. Protocols were constantly adapted to the pandemic situation, increasing stress for the entire education community in the school. The responsibility was mainly on the management teams, sometimes supported by specific personnel. Around 20% of schools considered using additional facilities outside their standard location. Nearly all administrations provided hygienic and health protection material, but only around half of them provided technological equipment. The decision of whether to use official online platforms or other tools was not unanimous. There were very few specific compulsory training activities, but there was a great range of elective courses. There was no increase in the number of school buses. Some of the communities decided to cancel services like the canteens and libraries. The extracurricular activities were mostly all cancelled. The inspection services offered heterogeneous approaches and FEDADi mentioned it would have been useful to reduce bureaucracy and increase collaboration.

Student academic achievement seems to have decreased. Ferrero mentioned that Adimad stated that students in 3rd ESO (between 14 and 15 years old) appeared to have failed 15% or 20% more subjects during the first trimester (September– December 2020) compared to the same period in 2019 (Ferrero, 2021).

Sanz, Cuerdo, and Doncel (2020) concluded that "during the closure of the centers due to COVID-19, there was a notable increase in the use of digital resources compared to the last five years, although this increase was not homogeneous between applications or between regions. However, in Spain there was no divergence in access to digital educational resources due to the level of family income, at least regarding free access digital educational resources."

The State Education Council published the first version of its report of the postpandemic Spanish educational situation in January 2021 (Consejo Escolar del Estado, 2021). This report mentioned that in November, only 0.09% of schools closed because of COVID-19 cases after opening in September and 13.37% had classrooms under quarantine. Considering the data, the incidence of the pandemic at schools was lower than the general average. The age group with the highest incidence of contagion (ages 15 to 29 years old) caught COVID-19 at social and familial activities, but not at schools. This suggests that school precautionary measures were successful.

# **11.4 Conclusions**

The education measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic should be analyzed in two different periods: until the end of the 2019–2020 academic year (March to July 2020) and during the first trimester of the 2020–2021 school year (September to December 2020). During the first period, most face-to-face instruction was suspended and repliced by online modalities. In some cases, small groups in Bachillerato returned to the classrooms in June to prepare for the university access EBAU exam. During the second period, students mostly returned to the classrooms with health risk control measures (masks, security distance, intense disinfection and ventilation, small "bubble" groups within classrooms, etc.)

In both cases, it is possible to draw several conclusions about the measures taken. We will try to examine the causes and present the consequences elicited in each set of measures.

(1) In Spain, **measures were taken late**. There were no proactive policies; actions were slowly reactive to the pandemic development, with no previous plan of action. In January 2020, the Spanish government learned about the situation in China7 and Italy (a neighboring country with many international exchanges

7 In January, a large number of reports warned of the seriousness of the situation, like those transmitted by the workplace hazard prevention service of the national police (Servicio de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales de la Policía Nacional), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the National Intelligence Centre (CNI). Also, January 30th the World Health Organization indicated that COVID was a "public health risk of international concern". A confirmation that the existing data

with Spain).8 In those places, infected patients, and deaths rapidly increased. The government did not take any precautionary measures with travelers coming from these two countries; for example, temperature checks were not instituted, negative virus tests were not requested (although Italy, for example, had already implemented them).

The borders were not closed, and it was not compulsory for the population to wear protective masks; it was only a recommendation, but there was no insufficient stock to meet the demand for face masks. International sport events (like the Valencia— Inter Milan soccer Champions League match on March 6th), political meetings (Vox party in Vista Alegre, Madrid on March 8th), public festivals like the *Mascletá* in Valencia and the feminist demonstrations to celebrate the 8th of March (attended by many government members) continued to take place. Only one major event, the Mobile World Congress of Barcelona, planned for the 24 to 27th of February, was cancelled on February 12th, but the decision was made by the organizers and not by the health authorities. It was not until the state of emergency on March 14th that implementation of those measures began.

(2) Measures were taken with **no political consensus**. The political stakeholders did not assure a trustworthy and responsible national behavior. The government´s strategy did not have the approval of the parties in the opposition nor support from some regional institutions; different Autonomous Communities took actions that did not coincide with the national government proposals. The strategy should have been national, but it was strongly criticized because there was no consensus, and it was undermined by the regional governments. Some critics were regional Presidents belonging to the majority party (as the case of Emiliano García-Page, regional President of Castilla-La Mancha, from the Socialist Party).9

There was no consensus between the central government and the governments of the Autonomous Communities. The different political parties did not agree on

https://www.larazon.es/espana/20200324/3tbo4izi6zdttpijmbpgbzogdi.html.

urged action before March (44 days after the WHO´s alert) is that February 12th, John Hoffman, organizer of the Mobile World Congress, announced the cancelation of the event (expected to attract 100.000 visitors from all over the world to Barcelona). As a result of this announcement the Spanish Health Minister mentioned that "There is no public health reason that prevents celebrating an event of these characteristics in our country".

https://www.elespanol.com/espana/20200331/informes-oficiales-gobierno-desdeno-efecto-dem oledor-coronavirus/478703438\_0.html.

https://okdiario.com/investigacion/cni-traslado-preocupacion-delegacion-pekin-sobre-covid-19 pero-moncloa-ignoro-5499913.

8 At the end of February Italy already had 900 cases, 21 deceases and specific measures were already in place in some areas of the country.

9 https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/politica/page-reclama-una-estrategia-nacional-mas-meticulosay-decidida-contra-el-virus/10002-4383874.

basic common actions (for example, even votes in the National Parliament regarding declaration of a state of emergency were far from unanimous).10

Spanish Education and Health Care decentralization hindered agreement on safety measures, such as deciding and organizing the acquisition of protective equipment like masks for health professionals and the general public or the acquisition of ventilators for hospital emergency units.

High political polarization also hindered consensus. The Spanish parliament after the 2019 election represents 16 political parties (*Parlamento Español*, 2019). The parties Podemos (a radical left-wing party) and Vox (a radical right-wing party) defend extreme opposite ideas and foment the division of the chamber in two blocks. The government of PSOE and Podemos depends on the constant support of several parties of the Congress Chamber to achieve the necessary majority to approve each decision.

10 Results in October 29th vote in the National Parliament to prorogation Alarm State was 194 in favour and 152 not in favour (against or abstention).

# **References**

*y Final Del Curso.* Retrieved from https://www.comunidad.madrid/sites/default/files/doc/educac ion/20.04\_resolucion\_final\_curso\_covid-19.pdf.

**Javier M. Valle** Awarded the "Pedro Rosello" Award (Best Spanish Doctoral Thesis in Comparative Education). Professor at UAM University, specializing in Supranational Education (particularly in the European Union). Director of the UAM Research Group on Education Policy Supranational (GIPES). EURYDICE advisor. TEAM-EUROPE member. Vice President of SEEC. Director of the Journal of Supranational Policies of Education and Co-Director of the Spanish Journal of Comparative Education, REEC. Member of the Education Council of the Community of Madrid.

**Carlos de Olagüe-Smithson** Principal at the IES Pedro de Tolosa High School and part-time professor at the Carlos III University. Member of the UAM Research Group on Education Policy Supranational (GIPES), ADIMAD, Association of High School Principals, and responsible for international affairs in FP Empresa (VET Spanish association). Erasmus and VET expert.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Chapter 12 The Impact of COVID-19 on a Fragile Education System: The Case of South Africa**

**Crain Soudien, Vijay Reddy, and Jaqueline Harvey**

**Abstract** This chapter provides a critical look at what COVID-19 meant for the education sector in South Africa. It documents the path of the pandemic in the education space to understand its effects and the short-term responses of the education system. It begins with the premise that the South African educational system is structurally fragile. Its fragility arises out of the injustices of the apartheid system which disadvantaged schools and learners. It argues that the country has made progress in dealing with this legacy but that the drivers of change, such as improved household incomes, improved access to school materials and better nutrition, have come under strain in recent times. Because of COVID-19, the upward social mobility of low-income communities is growing in precarity while inequalities are exacerbated.

# **12.1 Introduction**

As the world enters its second year of facing the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not only appropriate but necessary that the effects and implications of the pandemic on key social institutions, structures, and individuals are understood well. They need to be understood to assist with the immediate crisis—the urgent containment of the most egregious effects of the disease. More importantly, they need to be understood for the task of looking toward the future.

This future-oriented task will aid in the development of strategies that will position systems and institutions to anticipate and prepare for future similar events and leverage this crisis to make fresh starts where systems, processes, and practices have clearly not worked, not supported everyone equally, and not offered individuals and communities the opportunities to which they have a legitimate claim. This task has immediate relevance for systems of health and social welfare. It applies, however,

C. Soudien (B)

Nelson Mandela University and Human Sciences Research Council, 20, 4th Avenue, Rondebosch East, Cape Town 7789, South Africa e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
V. Reddy · J. Harvey Human Sciences Research Council, Durban, South Africa

poignantly, to the question of education in the circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding the existing social context is crucial in making sense of the impact of COVID-19 on South Africa, an enormously complex society. While it is a middleincome country, alongside of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Malaysia, and therefore has access to resources and infrastructure affordances not at the disposal of poorer countries, its social, religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity is overlain with the deep fractures of race, gender and class. While South Africa has made progress in reducing extreme poverty, 'largely due to redistributive transfers in the form of government grants' (Zizzamia et al., 2019: 3), poverty rates remain high. Zizzamia and his colleagues' estimate is that while the country's middle class has grown, and has diversified in racial terms, it only stands at approximately 25% of the national population. In 2015, 55.5% of South Africa's people could not afford to meet their basic needs (Stats SA, 2017). An important distinguishing feature of the country is the social precarity of people who are around the food poverty line of R515 per month (Zizzamia et al., 2019: 9). Using the metaphor 'snakes and ladders,' Zizzamia and his colleagues emphasize how this precarity is determined by an individual's human capital and his/her access to the labour market. They do not specifically focus on access to education, but it could be argued that insufficient access to educational inputs is clearly a critical factor in giving substance to this precarity. As we show below, access remains unequally distributed across the population. How COVID-19 has conditioned this precarity we will only have a good sense of in the future.

We seek to develop a sense of how the effects of the pandemic have played out in South Africa. The approach we take is to examine the multiple levels at which these effects are in operation. These include the legacy level, essentially that of race, the socio-economic level and that of the individual's attributes. Adapting Amnesty International's (2020) categorisation, we work with the approach here that a learner's experience of education in South Africa is for the most part contingent on his/her racial background and socioeconomic status (which overlap significantly), and the less-well understood factor of his/her individual learning attributes. Inequality arises due to one or a combination of these factors.

The chapter begins with a description of the country's socio-economic context, especially as it relates to the provision of education. It then details the onset of the pandemic and the measures that were put in place at the national and provincial levels to mitigate the pedagogical effects of the disruption. These, as will be shown, were focused on keeping the system on track for meeting the formal requirements of the learning year. It was clear that the inherent fragility of the system gave it little room to experiment with new ways of dealing with its inherited and new challenges. The chapter then offers a broad discussion of the effects of the pandemic on two levels. The first, to which most attention is given in this chapter, is the systemic level where the effects of school closures are examined, namely loss of learning days and educational opportunities for different socio-economic groups. The second level is that of the individual. A crucial feature of this experience is that many learners were unable to learn from home; this was primarily reflective of their socioeconomic conditions. They did not have the necessary infrastructure, devices, or funds to participate. But the challenges were also personal. Children, irrespective of their social statuses, learn in different ways. These differences are not recognised in South Africa.

The approach we take in this chapter is largely in the spirit of a critical stock-taking exercise. It is intended to be both comprehensive and analytic. We have attempted to locate whatever has been officially released into the public domain by the educational authorities such as publicly gazetted bulletins and circulars, reports of deliberations, discussions, and consultations which the authorities have made available. Several public surveys relating to the pandemic and schooling have been undertaken in the country. However, most have focused on the public's attitude to the opening of schools and the readiness of schools to re-open safely. Although self-reported material exists in abundance on the effects of the pandemic on learners and their families, this material describes learners' experiences in general terms but does not constitute an empirically grounded resource for describing the effects of the pandemic on learning and learning attainment or the psycho-social well-being and health of learners. Our approach strategically interweaves the official data and the copious secondary data that has become available in our assessment.

# **12.2 The Beginning of the Pandemic**

The first officially recognised COVID-19 case in South Africa was recorded on the 5th of March 2020. More than a year later, on the 28th of April 2021, the number of infections had reached 1,577,200 cases. The number of people who had died had reached 54,237 and 1,502,986 had recovered (see Worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/ and Turner et al., 2021). As with other countries around the world, South Africa introduced strict measures, including multi-level lockdowns and prohibitions on travel and movement. The government established two key structures to manage the disaster, a National Command Council (NCC) consisting of key cabinet ministers under the chairpersonship of the national president and a Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) in the Ministry of Health. The function of the first was to make decisions with respect to the pandemic itself—the measures to be instituted to manage the pandemic and to co-ordinate the country's response to it. The NCC's challenge was not only that of saving lives, as was the case for many high-income countries, but, given the precarity of many households, also of saving livelihoods. That of the second, the MAC, was to advise on the multiple dimensions and issues relating to the pandemic.

Drawing on these structures, on the 15th of March 2020, the President of South Africa, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa, declared COVID-19 a national disaster. A Level 5 lockdown was declared, first for 21 days and then extended for a further two weeks, and only permitted essential services and business to operate. A R500 billion relief package was announced for the provision of immediate support to unemployed workers and distressed businesses. The country, after the middle of April 2020 gradually eased levels of lockdown to Level 1 by September 2020. In the wake of a resurgence in infection levels during the country's December national holidays when daily infection levels (13,674 people) exceeded infection rates during the peak of the pandemic in July 2020—the President announced the return to an adjusted Level 3 Lockdown restrictions. Bans on large gatherings were instituted, movement across borders limited only to essential travel and the sale of and consumption of alcohol prohibited in public spaces. In January 2021, the country was placed under a Level 1 state of lockdown.

# **12.3 Outlining the Fragility of the South African Educational System**

To understand the impact of COVID-19 on the education system, it is first necessary to make some remarks about its nature and structure. It is, in its current form, a young system struggling to divest itself of its apartheid origins. The apartheid order had created 15 separate racially and ethnically defined education authorities. A system that has left individuals classified as white as the most advantaged group. In the closing years of apartheid, the late 1980s, the education levels of the population were low. Almost a quarter of adults in the 25–64-year age-bracket had no schooling and only 8% had post grade 12 qualifications (Stats SA, 2011). As Fiske and Ladd (2004: 44) explain, "as late as 1994, after the National government had significantly increased spending on black learners, the amount spent per pupil in white schools was more than two and a half times that spent on behalf of black learners in the urban townships."

Apartheid was abolished in 1994 with the ascent to power of an African National Congress-led Government of National Unity. To achieve a more equitable and economically productive society, education, schooling, and the economy were prioritised in line with Nelson Mandela's belief that "*education was the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world*" (Hattang and Venter, 2011: 90). The new government immediately abolished segregation and inequality in education. It passed the South African Schools Act (SASA) which deracialized the system and brought all learners under a unified national authority (DoE, 1996). The national department had responsibility for policy, but implementation responsibility was granted to provinces on a subsidiarity basis.

In terms of the provisions of SASA (DoE, 1996) the current system consists of public and a relatively small number of private schools. In 2016, based on the latest officially available report from the Department of Basic Education (DBE, 2018), there were 29,749 established public and registered independent schools in South Africa. Of these schools were 14,795 primary schools accommodating 6,929,834 learners and 203,139 teachers, 6,186 secondary schools with 3,989,236 learners and 140,532 teachers, and 4,593 combined and intermediate schools with 2,013,465 learners and 74,942 teachers. Of the 13,307,830 learners in the system, 12,342,283 were in ordinary public schools and 590,282 were in private or independent schools.

Authoritative analyses of the school system describe it as a two-tiered system, characterised by the kinds and levels of inequality that are evident in the wider social system (see Reddy et al., 2012; Hunter, 2019). Seventy-five per cent of all learners in the system are in no-fee schools, many of which carry the legacy disadvantages of being largely black and poor, while the other 25% are in privileged schools, which were largely formerly white and now serve the expanded post-apartheid, and no longer white-only, middle class (Spaull, 2019: 4). The majority system is beset by all the challenges that come with racialized inequality: inefficiencies (van den Berg, 2008), teacher shortages in key subjects (Simkins, 2015) and poor school climate and discipline (Winnaar et al., 2018). Although school infrastructure and resources have improved over the last 25 years, some learners still attend schools which have poor infrastructure and dilapidated buildings, dangerous and unsanitary pit latrines, issues with water supply, ill-equipped teachers, shortages of learning materials, large classes, and high dropout rates (see Amnesty International, 2020; Parker et al., 2020 and Stats SA, 2017). The privileged sector is the exact opposite; it is higher-performing and highly functional (Amnesty International, 2020). This structural division makes the management of the system difficult.

This two-tiered character of the system is evident in the country's performance in important benchmarking exercises such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). TIMSS has been conducted every four years at either the Grade 8 or 9 level since 1995. With the completion of the 2019 TIMSS cycle, a 25 year longitudinal view is now available. TIMSS 1995 ranked South Africa the lowest of the set of participating countries with a very low mathematics achievement score of 276 (SE 6.7). Only one in ten learners demonstrated that they had acquired the minimum mathematics proficiency for their grade-cohort. Improving educational outcomes in this first eight-year period was difficult. Mathematics' achievement scores remained stagnant over the TIMSS 1999 and 2003 cycles. From TIMSS 2003 to TIMSS 2011, the country recorded an increased average mathematics score, and further increases were noted in TIMSS 2015 and 2019. Between 2003 and 2019, the mathematics achievement improved by 102 TIMSS points or one standard deviation (Reddy et al., 2020). The gains were largely due to post-apartheid's most significant drivers of social change, improved home and school conditions effected through a combination of social welfare interventions and socio-economic factors, the provision of social grants, school nutrition schemes and fee-subsidies, improved school resources and instructional materials, increased proficiency in the language of the assessment, improved teacher knowledge, increased levels of parental education, and a greater focus on what happened inside schools and classrooms (Zizzamia et al., 2019).

The TIMSS 2019 mathematics average achievement score of 389 (SE 2.3) and the fact that four in ten learners demonstrated that they had acquired the minimum mathematical proficiencies shifted the categorisation of the country's educational outcomes from *very low* to *low*. An even bigger success story after 2003 was that the highest achievement increases came from the lowest performers who were probably the most disadvantaged learners and who had benefitted most from government's interventions.

Despite these developments, two legacy effects are of relevance for this analysis of the effects of COVID-19 on learner outcomes. First, South African achievement continues to be linked to race, socio-economic background, and geographic location. The mathematics achievement gap between fee and no-fee schools in TIMSS 2019 of 75 points indicates that learners from disadvantaged backgrounds still perform at a lower level compared to their advantaged counterparts (Reddy et al., 2020). Moreover, returning us to Zizzamia et al.'s (2019) characterisation of social mobility as a 'snakes and ladders' phenomenon, we must be concerned about how disadvantaged students are able to sustain the gains they are making given the drivers of change on which they depend are vulnerable. The mathematics improvement rate from TIMSS 2003 to 2011 was 7.4 points per year, but from 2011 to 2019 decreased to 4.6 points. We are unable at this point to definitively explain the dynamics behind these shifts but, following Juan and Visser (2017), suggest that they could be related to significant home and school environment improvements. Among other factors, the cycles of greatest improvement in TIMSS performance happened during a period when 'positive changes over time' were taking place in learners' home environments (Visser and Juan, 2020: 19–20). Upward as the improvement trajectory continued, the impetus faltered after 2011. This was the period, significantly, when socio-economic conditions in the country deteriorated rapidly as unemployment increased. In an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on education, the significance of the relationship between the increased social and educational provision and improved learner educational attainment cannot be overstated. Our drivers of improvement were compromised.

# **12.4 Government's Response to COVID-19**

When it became clear that South Africa, like the rest of the world (Zhu and Liu, 2020), was staring the prospect of uncontrollable contagion in the eye, its government closed down the schooling system. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) (2020a), responsible for the administration of all public schools, announced at the beginning of the national lockdown that:

In accordance with the pronouncement by the President on 15 March 2020, schools will be closed from 18 March and will reopen on 14 April 2020. This decision has been informed by the warnings provided by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases and World Health Organization who have highlighted the alarming increase of infections within the country over a three day period… Provincial Education Departments, districts and schools are advised to take advantage of this time and are encouraged to utilise the time effectively by ensuring that learners participate in established stimulating programmes such as the Read to Lead programme, maths buddies, constructive holiday assignments, etc. through the supervision and guidance of parents and the broader community whilst learners are at home. This will be supported through the provisioning of workbooks, worksheets, readers, etc.

Closing the schooling system required that the DBE plan and inform the public about the steps it would take to keep the system functional. Within a month, in the middle of April 2020, the DBE had put in place a COVID-19 response programme with the support of the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), a multiparty civil society stakeholder. A major initiative was put in place to have water tanks and water supplies provided at every school and community (2020a).

The March 2020 Level 5 lockdown, as indicated above, meant school closures at the beginning of the school year and the expectation that work, teaching, and learning would continue from home. The most important elements of this emergency plan were the following:

In addition to the efforts of the DBE, the NECT was also able to report (NECT, 2020b) that the National Association of Social Change Entities in Education (NASCEE), a network coalition of non-governmental organisations, funders and individuals had committed themselves to a national collaboration compact, developed a web-based platform which indicated the activities and services of NGOs and funders in response to pandemic and begun coordinating the curation of online and offline learning content for learners. While this list is not exhaustive, a multifaceted approach was taken in response to COVID-19-related challenges, although it was highly reliant on technological and Internet access.

In June of 2020, the DBE (2020b) published its second medium-term plan entitled *School Recovery Plan in Response to COVID-19 (SRPRC)*. The proposal had initially been to open schools in June 2020, but because of a spike in infections the date was pushed forward, and schools ultimately reopened in August 2020. The plan was based on a phasing-in of grades and a rotational approach. Beginning with learners in examination classes, Grades 7 and 12 were brought back first and then the other grades on a gradual basis. The rotational arrangement also made allowance for only having particular grades in attendance on particular days of the week to minimise the dangers of over-crowding. Schools were given options for rotation. The document paid a great deal of attention to the questions of safety and infection mitigation. With respect to learning, some key purposes of the SRPRC were to:

#### 1. **Develop a Robust Curriculum Recovery Plan**

This included a plan for the recovery of teaching and learning time. Attention was given to the length of the school day, the length of the school term, and a reduction of time allocated for examinations and assessment. Guidance was also provided to learners for self-directed learning. The SRPRC (DBE, 2020b: 12), with respect to self-directed learning, said that "(i)n the case of self-directed learning, the learning material is prepared in such a manner that learners are able to progress from the known to the unknown on their own … such content must be well scaffolded and mediated through templates and vivid examples." The curriculum for Grade 12 was not revised.

#### 2. **Manage Examinations and Related Activities**

South Africa has a high stakes, externally set matriculation examination. These papers are normally set a year in advance. The DBE took the decision that the standard June Examination written by all learners across the system would be set aside. The exit level examination at the end of the academic year, which under normal circumstances would take place from late October and in November, would be written in November and early December. In terms of content, it would remain the same and all learners, irrespective of their opportunity-to-learn circumstances, would write the same exit level examination.

#### 3. **Develop Standard Operating Procedures to Guide the Basic Education Sector to Manage and Contain the Spread of Infection**

These procedures, aimed specifically at the health and safety of schools during the pandemic, were authored with the assistance of the Education Technical Working Group of the MAC and the NICD.

The re-opening of schools was implemented using a 'differentiated approach' (DBE, 2020b: 5). Underpinning the curriculum segment of the SRPRC were concerns about "how much of the curriculum content could not be covered because of … the lockdown; implications of the lost time for teaching and learning … assessment …; how can the time lost be recovered or can the curriculum be reviewed to ensure that the essence of the curriculum is completed in the remaining time available?" (DBE, 2020b: 6). The plan explained that its execution would assist schools to recover "between 29 and 33 teaching days …. The number of days recovered will be less than the number of days lost and hence there will be a need for a trimming and reorganisation in all grades/years, except Grade 12" (DBE, 2020b: 14). The time lost for Grade 12 learners in particular would be recovered through a shortening of the period scheduled for examination preparation and the extension of the school day.

Operational principles for guiding the SRPRC were explicitly articulated around the need for Inclusion and Equity, 'ensuring that all learners, and particularly the most vulnerable, access the planned programme', taking cognizance of the unique needs of schools, phases and grades/years, ensuring that plans were determined in a flexible way 'guided by the scope and size of the school population', time management to optimise the use of teaching time, and preserving learning quality and a 'focus on skills, knowledge and values, rather just content coverage' (ibid). It is important to emphasize that health and safety were the overriding feature in all these plans.

Interestingly, the provincial education authorities, given the subsidiarity principle around which education is governed in South Africa between the central government and the provinces, largely elected to use the guidelines and resources made available at the national level. Exceptions to this were the Free State Education Department and the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). The former, in addition to repeating the national schedules for radio and television-broadcast lessons and guides, also made available podcasts of lessons for issues and topics and gave their learners access to online and recorded tutorials (see www.education. fs.gov.za). For their part, the WCED (see wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za) not only provided guidelines for schools for managing the pandemic but made substantial education resources available for both learners and teachers and, most significantly, made available weekly lesson plans developed by their internal subject teams for the entire curriculum. For every subject in every grade there was a lesson plan and an actual lesson which could be referred to.

The response of South Africa to the pandemic was thus like that of other countries where an emphasis was placed on the provision of online and hardcopy resources to facilitate educational processes. We turn now to the impact of the pandemic on the learning experience. How much learning took place and what is one able to say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, was the effect of the disruption?

# **12.5 Education in 2020 and 2021: The Impact of COVID-19**

Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the limited empirical data we have at our disposal, the approach we take below is to work largely speculatively with respect to assessing the impact of COVID-19 on learning. As we write this chapter, the results of the National Senior Certificate Examinations, the terminal examination for the schooling system, were announced. Interestingly, while the national pass rate declined by 5.1 percentage points, from 81.3% in 2019 to 76.2% in 2020, the Minister of Education, Mrs. Angie Motshekga (2021), explained that the decline was attributable to a drop in the performance of *progressed learners*, a group of candidates who were repeating their examinations. It is not possible, however, to conclude from this that COVID-19 has had *no* effect on learning.

In South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the educational impact of the pandemic included the following: (i) learning losses because of school closures, (ii) widening of pre-existing education disparities and (iii) learning gains made over time would be wiped out (Dorne et al., 2020; Hanushek and Woessmann, 2020; United Nations, 2020).

During the March 2020 Level 5 lockdown there were two possible ways to continue with learning activities: online learning or self-learning with parental and sibling support. Even for advantaged schools and learners who could do so, several issues influenced the effectiveness of online learning. For example, the urgency of responding to the pandemic did not allow for the development of an implementation plan or a system of educator and learner support. Educators and learners were thrust, almost overnight, into an education model with which few had experience (Doukakis and Alexopoulos, 2020).

More advantaged schools and households were better able to sustain learning using online learning strategies, although this required effort and presented challenges for both teachers and parents. For this group of learners, schooling continued through online lessons, either through live online teaching or uploaded recorded lessons.

Many disadvantaged schools, however, did not have the means to facilitate satisfactory online learning (Parker et al., 2020; Spaull, 2020). In poorer households, many children did not have a quiet workspace, desk, computer, internet connectivity, or parents who had the time or capacity to take on the role of home schoolers. The 2018 General Household Survey estimated that 22% of households had access to a computer and only 10% had internet access (Stats SA, 2019: 63). Spaull and Van der Berg (2020: 8), based on a survey they conducted, found that while 90% of South African households reported having access to a mobile phone, only 60% reported having access to the internet via their mobile phone.

A survey of their members by the South African Democratic Teacher Union (SADTU, 2021) revealed that two-thirds of learners from poorer households had almost no communication from their teachers during school closures. During the time learners remained at home, Spaull and Van der Berg (2020: 9) estimated that 18% of all children in the school-going age group, were in households without an adult caregiver during the day. What is more, without either teacher contact or adult supervision many African language mother-tongue learners would have had no assistance for managing the English in which most of the lessons would have been delivered.

This differentiation in social capital and resources meant a differentiated set of learning experiences at home. While all learners experienced learning losses during this time, because of the lack of access to educational inputs for three-quarters of learners, almost no learning took place for many children from poor backgrounds. Several media reports confirmed this. The executive director of a large teacher union described the situation of Grade 1 learners in several schools in the country: "… (there is going to) … be a generation of people who cannot read at all. If you think we have a problem with reading now, watch this space" (Macupe, 2021: 5). Macupe (ibid.) cited a parent who said that her child was going to high school, but he struggled to read and write. As we noted previously, the government supported learning programmes through public radio and television, but these covered limited number of subjects and grades and were not enough to bridge the divide of unequal access to resources. On the basis that television programmes were available for only one and half hours per day, Spaull and Van der Berg (2020) calculated that learners were only receiving the equivalent of 5% of the instruction time they would have received in a normal school day.

School closures also meant the halting of supplementary services provided through the schooling system. For instance, currently, over nine million learners receive two meals per day through the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP). The suspension of this programme during the lockdown period left these children at risk of being underfed for several months (Le Grange, 2020; Parker et al., 2020).

For many learners, school is a source of education as well as safety and support. One school located in a rural area moved final-year learners in with their teachers to continue their studies and support during lockdown (CBS News 2020). As one learner stated, many were aware of the importance of education for social mobility and the reduction of inequality: "*There are four people in each room, and we get lunch there after school. It's important because getting a good education – especially in South Africa – it sort of determines where you're going to end up in life*" (ibid).

# **12.6 Time Away from Schools and Classrooms: Deepening and Widening Inequalities**