COVID-19 Pandemic, Distance Learning, and Educational Inequality in Rural Ethiopia

Introduction

In late December 2019, a new virus emerged in China in the province of Wuhan (He et al., 2020; Wise et al., 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO) used the term 2019 novel coronavirus to refer to a coronavirus that affected the lower respiratory tract of patients with pneumonia in Wuhan, China, on 29 December 2019 (Adhikari et al., 2020). The first case of COVID-19 in Ethiopia was confirmed on 13 March 2020. On 16 March 2020, the Ethiopian Prime Minister's office announced that schools, sporting events, and public gatherings shall be suspended for 15 days until further notification. However, due to the increased outbreak of the virus, Ethiopia declared a state emergency on 10 April 2020 for the next five months. This intensified the closure of schools nationwide. As of 03 June 2020 (4:00 PM GMT), worldwide, 6,482,695 confirmed cases, 383,072 deaths and 3,089,101 recoveries were reported1. From the same report, it is possible to understand that 1486 cases were confirmed in Ethiopia, 17 deaths and 246 recoveries.

As a result of COVID-19, schools were closed, which resulted in educational disruption. Despite this, it is difficult to know the exact number of students who disrupted education due to COVID-19; over one billion students are affected. This decision to temporarily close schools was prompted by the principle that large gatherings of persons constitute a serious risk to safeguarding public health during a pandemic (IESALC, 2020). As of 25 March 2020, 150 countries reported the closure of schools. In secondary schools, longer school closures could increase dropout risk for youth, particularly from lower-income groups (World Bank, 2020a). World Bank (2020b) stated the disruption of education as ‘learning poverty’. The report of the World Bank further indicated that with the spread of COVID-19, among many disruptions to normal life, more than 160 countries have mandated temporary school closures, leaving 1.6 billion children and youth out of school. This article aims not to analyze the socioeconomic consequences of educational disruption due to COVID-19 but to analyze how distance learning interventions are exclusive and expose many students to educational inequality. The interventions taken homogenize students while the reality on the ground is different. The article also glimpses how the world is unfair in the distribution of resources, making the declaration of ‘education for all’ pseudo and futile.

The length of closure of schools and higher education institutions depends on the ability of the country to control the pandemic. No one knows for sure how long these closures are likely to last. Initial measures taken by many governments have ranged from 15 to 30 days, but one can easily anticipate that they will be extended until the pandemic subsides (IESALC, 2020). Although the pandemic poses a global challenge, it adds further complexity to countries with poor growth, inequality, and public financing (IESALC, 2020). The problem of COVID-19 on education is not proportionally fallen on poor and rich countries. Even in emerging countries, the problem is not the same in urban and rural areas. Being a citizen of an emerging country, living in a rural area, having a low-income family, being a girl, and having a certain disability have different levels of inequality in socioeconomic aspects. Hence, devising distance learning mechanisms, which are new models of education after the pandemic, which consider such differences of students is vital.

Infrastructure and familiarity with the tools drive successes (and challenges) in delivering learning. While schools are closed, many countries have turned to distance learning to mitigate lost time in continuing education services. Some countries are simply putting resources on their website and making available more products, but not necessarily online classes. While countries with robust connectivity deliver distance classes effectively, others who lack them find it difficult to reach all students equally (World Bank, 2020a). According to the report of the World Bank (2020b), while some African countries (Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Botswana, and Gambia) have reasonable connectivity, and there are devices like tablets, most African countries' access to mobile devices is optimized.