Asean education and the pandemic
Published on: Sunday, December 27, 2020
By: Ong Bo Yang
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Malaysian students at school.
Governments worldwide have a strong emphasis on education as having high educational standards and literacy rates will help to create a highly-skilled and innovative workforce, which will help to stimulate a country’s economy.
In Asean, there are slightly greater than 12 million students being schooled in approximately 7,000 higher education tertiary institutions regionally. Education has allowed Asean youths to gain knowledge from a global perspective, while also being able to adapt the knowledge and solutions learnt to a local and regional context.
Asean is seeking to build an educational hub for higher education in Southeast Asia, where students can also study in another Asean country. This would further improve economic and social ties between Southeast Asia nations.
It is unfortunate that the Coronavirus pandemic has largely affected education in Asean and worldwide, as physical lessons are disrupted. According to OECD estimates, more than 1.5 billion students worldwide had to endure school closures.
More worryingly, the Global Survey on Youth and Covid-19 discovered that 13pc of students globally did not have access to educational opportunities at all, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the short run and long run, this would negatively affect the learning abilities and skill-sets of these youth, which would threaten their employment prospects. In fact, because of the missed learning opportunities, students might take a longer time than usual before they are ready for the workforce and employment.
As educational progress is being held back, decades of progress to mitigate income inequalities in nations would be undermined. Meeting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals related to education and poverty by 2030 might be harder to achieve.
Unesco’s director-general also reminded that past pandemics or diseases have caused the poorest girls in the poorest regions of the globe, to completely lose touch with education and end up quitting schools.
The Department of Education (DepEd) of the Philippines tried mitigating the negative repercussions of the pandemic by adopting “blended learning”. This way, even though students in the Philippines do not attend physical classes, learning opportunities are still available remotely.
Blended learning leverages on both online learning and physical delivery of school notes. For students without a computer or internet access, physical notes will be delivered to them since they cannot engage in online learning.
Remote learning has its own benefits as education can be more accessible and inclusive to the masses and students can view or even replay the classroom recordings at their own pace and convenience.
Unfortunately, there would still be a proportion of students without access to both online learning and physical notes as they stay in remote locations. The DepEd will ensure that such students can still learn via televisions or radio broadcasts.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) is currently managing a television station named TV Edukasi, which will broadcast live education shows.
Other than schools changing their approach to education, Asean governments and firms contributed by offering courses to students and workers so that they can acquire valuable skill-sets, in order to remain competitive in the workforce.
MoEC also runs Rumah Belajar, an online portal offering knowledge resources and communication tools.
The Indonesian government collaborated with Bank Negara Indonesia and several other organisations to introduce the pre-employment card initiative, which will help Indonesians acquire knowledge and skill-sets. Eligible institutions will conduct training that is necessary for a particular industry.
This will help improve the competitive edge and employability prospects of Indonesian job seekers.
In neighbouring country Malaysia, The Malaysian government budgeted RM2 billion for the Skills and Upskilling initiative.
Malaysia’s Digital Economy Cooperation (MDEC) then launched a digital programme to improve digital literacy and skill-sets of Malaysians. The organisation will partner online educational providers such as Coursera, General Assembly, and Khan Academy to offer Malaysians courses at a discounted price, or for free.
The MDEC will also work with 7 organisations and 5 universities to provide 30 Masters in Artificial Intelligence scholarships for Malaysians.
Prior to the pandemic, Asean has already made great strides in education, including advancing educational collaboration with its Asian partners.
During the third India-Asean youth dialogue in June 2020, India fostered closer cooperation in education with Asean.
Previously, India and Asean already had close educational ties. The Mekong Ganga Cooperation and Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation frameworks had offered 1,000 scholarships to Asean students.
Furthermore, during the 25th anniversary of the Asean-India Commemorative Summit last year, India’s Prime Minister announced that there would be 1,000 PHD fellowships for Southeast Asian students at the Indian Institutes of Technology.
Many CEOs at major multinational corporations hail from India, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Asean can learn from India on how to nurture top and visionary talents.
Asean and South Korea partnered together in July 2020 for The Higher Education for Asean Talents Scholarship initiative, where there are US$8 million worth of scholarships for Asean higher education faculty students to study a doctoral degree in South Korea. Potential students would be studying at South Korean Universities such as Korea University and Kyunghee University.
Before the pandemic, there were educational initiatives to improve knowledge on science and technology, and raise awareness about Asean issues.
The Asean Foundation and Microsoft launched the Asean Digital Innovation Programme on 14 March 2019, equipping Asean youths with digital skills such as computer science skill-sets. Online training of digital knowledge and skill-sets will be conducted via the Future Ready Asean platform.
SAP and the Asean Foundation developed the Asean Data Science Explorers Programme, to provide Asean youths with data analytics training, improve digital literacy and raise greater awareness about the Asean bloc.
The Asean Foundation initiated the Asean Science and Technology Fellowship programme and the Asean Foundation Model Asean Meeting to allow Asean scientists and University students respectively to understand about the decision-making and policy-making processes in Southeast Asia. Singapore’s Ministry of Education plans to equip students with greater knowledge and awareness about Asean matters by incorporating Asean affairs into humanities modules in junior colleges and secondary schools.
Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to education, the benefits of education are irrefutably immense and hence, Asean governments should try their best to ensure that every youth has access to educational opportunities.
A silver lining to the Coronavirus pandemic will be that the acquisition of digital skills and knowledge will be expedited, and that Asean schools, students, and workers will learn to be more agile and adaptable.
School institutions in Asean will embrace business continuity planning where a comprehensive backup contingency procedure will be designed in case of emergency situations where physical lessons cannot continue. This way, there would be different educational programs and formats during good and bad times.
Post-SARS, Singapore schools have been developing their own e-learning system where educational resources, assignments, and activities can be accessed via the internet portal. There would be sufficient occasions where Singaporean students can familiarise themselves with the internet platform functions, such as utilising the portal from home during the annual e-learning day.
As Asean develops expeditiously and has an increasingly important say in global affairs, the current educational initiatives will equip Asean students with sufficient knowledge about Asean affairs, as well as other skill-sets that will enable them to remain competitive.
Asean is currently working on the Asean Work Plan on Education 2021-2025, which will map out the bloc’s educational vision and targets for the next five years. With greater cooperation regionally and internationally, countries can mitigate the negative repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, and end up reaping the benefits from educational initiatives.
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