Tag: coronavirus

“The government gives me £35 a week to buy food… During the lockdown, my kids do not receive free school meals”

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog post as told to Jáfia Câmara, School of Education.

As a refugee and single mother, lockdown in the UK is hard. #HumansofCOVID19

My name is Maria*. I am an asylum-seeker single-mother who escaped to the UK because I felt unsafe in my home country.

My life in the United Kingdom before the pandemic 

I arrived in the United Kingdom two years ago. It was hard for me because I am a single mother. I am alone with my two small kids. Initially, the accommodation and support I received as an asylum-seeker were horrible. I had to share a house with strangers who liked to drink alcohol and smoke. It was depressing. It was horrible. My living conditions are better now, but my children and I have faced many new difficult challenges. (more…)

Education and COVID-19: Is Ghana ready to return to the classroom?

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog post by Kenneth Gyamerah, Chevening Scholar, Professional teacher, and Global Youth Ambassador for Education.

Introduction

In March 2020, the government of Ghana announced a countrywide shutdown of schools as a precautionary measure to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. In response, the Ministry of Education (MOE)  in collaboration with Ghana Education Service rolled out remote learning interventions to provide education for the students. Data from UNESCO as of 29th  May 2020  shows there are 9,696,756 children and youth currently out of school in Ghana due to coronavirus. Of this number, 1,852,028 are in Pre-primary, 4,549,875 are in Primary, 2,851,160 are in Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) and 443,693 are in the tertiary institutions. In this blog, I will examine the MOE’s education response to COVID-19 in Ghana. (more…)

Reacting to Covid-19 by slashing fixed-term staff would be a disaster

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

This article was originally published by THE. Read the original article here: Reacting to Covid-19 by slashing fixed-term staff would be a disaster

The government must guarantee the sustainability of universities, say Richard Watermeyer, Aline Courtois and Hugh Lauder

Amid the rapid online migration imposed by the Covid-19 crisis, many academics are asking what happens next. Yet the focus of this question seems to have quickly changed, from “When will we be back on campus?” to “Will we be back?”

 

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The impacts of Covid-19 on basic education: How can Ghana respond, cope, and plan for recovery?

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Author and teacher Kenneth GyamerahBlog post by Kenneth Gyamerah, Professional Teacher and Development Consultant. MSc in Education (Policy and International Development) from the School of Education,  University of Bristol. Kenneth is a Chevening Scholar and a Global Youth Ambassador for Education.

With the global attention on the health implications, it is worth highlighting that the Coronavirus pandemic has triggered an unprecedented immediate global education emergency (Srivastava 2020). Taking some key learning experiences from disease outbreaks such as Ebola and SARS, it is apparent that the impact of COVID-19 on education will be critical for countries that have low economic resilience, inadequate technological infrastructure, limited budget for education , and high rates of dropouts. (more…)

Coronavirus: 14 simple tips for better online teaching

Posted on by Lucy Backwell
Indypendenz/Shutterstock

Today’s guest blog article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kyungmee Lee, Lancaster University

The past few days have seen increasing numbers of schools and universities across the world announce that they are moving to online-only learning. Hundreds of thousands of teachers are busy working to move their face-to-face lessons online. Designing online courses takes significant time and effort.

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