Increasing the Resilience of Education Systems in Asia and the Pacific
https://www.adb.org/news/events/incre...

Natural disasters, violent conflicts, and health crises disrupt education, and prolonged educational disruptions lead to dropout or learning losses. Disruptions, in turn, increase learning disparities. Without specific efforts to recover learning, these losses will be permanent. Ultimately, these disruptions can result in large lifetime earning losses and significantly lower economic development. The COVID-19 pandemic-induced learning losses significantly highlight the vulnerabilities facing education systems. As disruptions are likely to become more frequent and severe, effective strategies to build resilient education systems are needed.

In resilient education systems, learning continues during disruptions, students and education personnel receive mental health and social support, and support is provided for more vulnerable students. Once a disruption is over, learning rapidly recovers. Further rigorous empirical research on building resilient education systems is needed, with better documentation on the efforts, both successes and failures, of policy makers and practitioners. The issue of resilience should be central as countries rebuild their education systems.

This conference, jointly organized by ADBI and the Asian Development Bank, features empirical research papers from countries in Asia and the Pacific on learning loss and recovery during disruptions.