Impact of COVID 19 on the Education Sector

Dr.S.SUNDARARAJAN, Associate Professor, SIMS

COVID-19 has also affected the education sector like any other sector as lock down is mandatory even for schools and colleges. We have turned to so called on-line education, postponement of exams, finding ways to avoid loss of term, declaring lock down period as vacation, fees collection to be postponed, etc. In comparison with other sectors like industry, banks, e-commerce, transport, etc., issues or impact on education sector are manageable, not much interdependent with other sectors.

The following are the major impact on the education sector

1. There would be a big jump in the need for skill based education.
2. Online, simulation based, management game based education, linking theory to practice and vice versa would be a big priority.
3. The demand for On line education will increase to a large
4. Fly by night online education providers will increase dramatically at least in the short run.
5. Clamour for online examinations will rise, Initially this will be around 30% and gradually stabilize to 50% .
6. The statutory bodies will be forced to relax on the infrastructure needs like number of classrooms, library books, faculties etc. Infact qualifications of faculties will be replaced by industry experts.
7. Large number of industry personnel especially middle and junior senior personnel will now be available to train students at least till 2023 and 2024.
8. Syllabus, course content will get revised and new programs like crisis management, disaster management, health attack managements (today it is corona virus tomorrow it could be something else) etc. will be developed and can be offered as electives.
9. Faculties will need to keep themselves abreast of newer knowledge, newer methods of teaching, industry trends etc. Perhaps faculties will have to prepare videos, YouTube and put greater emphasis on learning management systems etc.
10. In the short run placements / joining dates for fresh students would be delayed and consequently students would have to develop competitive skills to get placements.
11. Innovations, R&D will get a big impetus. Health, Biotech, Pharma will see an increase in admissions.

COVID-19 has left certain lessons on education sector:

1. Schools closed for 2-3 months have limited the impact on education outcome.
2. On-line is the high- way for future learning.
3. Since we follow blindly Macaulay or Western model of education, we need to switch over to appropriate education model, to be executed with spirit.
4. We are going to overcome the issue of lock down on education sector by simple short cuts, I fear, after lock down we will continue in line with the older teaching practice methods.