Whilst educators and schools have tried diligently across the board to make sure that students have been supported in their virtual learning, teachers seem to agree that remote education hasn’t been beneficial for most students, and appears to have actively disadvantaged some.
Whilst it was very legitimate public health concerns that led to global school, college and university closures, research by McKinsey & Company suggests that students have paid a price when it comes to their education. Using a survey that asked groups of teachers in eight countries worldwide to rate the effectiveness of remote learning out of 10. The research was completed during the first round of school closures, between March 2020 and July 2020. The results are striking: the average score was a mere 5 out of 10.
Schools in the US and in Japan were particularly harsh in their critique of the effectiveness of a virtual model. Almost 60% of educators rated its effectiveness between 1 and 3 out of 10.
Teachers who were employed in schools with high poverty catchment areas found virtual classes to have been especially ineffective. This bolsters the idea that the pandemic has had an adverse affect on standing educational inequalities, and is likely widening the gap in achievement between students from affluent areas and students from poorer ones.
This can aslo be seen in the resources that teachers have had available during the pandemic: teachers in public schools gave remote learning an average success score of 4.8 out of 10, whereas teachers who taught in private schools gave remote learning a score of 6.2 out of 10. Teachers who worked in private schools were also much more likely to report that they felt that their students had adequate access to resources such as internet connections and appropriate technology whilst they were learning from home.
Low-income and at-risk students saw the worst of online learning, with teachers reporting that they appeared at the time to be suffering from higher setbacks than their classmates.
One thing to consider though is that this research took place during the very earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Schools and educational districts were still scrambling for purchase in quite unprecedented circumstances, and it’s likely that during subsequent months remote learning has become more effective, teething problems worked out and new norms established. This doesn’t, however, combat some of the long-term issues we’ve seen arise as a result of online learning, such as a decline in student mental health and greater feelings of exam stress.
It’s interesting research, and goes a long way to supporting the idea that children across the board seem to learn better in the classroom than in a virtual environment. You can access the whole report at McKinsey & Company’s website, where it explores the figures and the consequences of the trends in a little more detail.