Program Type: Webinar /
June 22, 2020 | 9:30am Afghanistan | 10:00am Maldives, Pakistan | 10:30am India, Sri Lanka | 10:45am Nepal | 11:00am Bangladesh, Bhutan | 11:30am Myanmar | 12:00nn Thailand | 1:00pm China, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore | 3:00pm Papua New Guinea | 5:00pm Fiji
Webinar Presentation/s
Vocational Excellence in the Time of COVID-19by Prof. Shyamal Majumdar, Ph.D.
TVET in The Context of COVID-19 : Challenges and Opportunitiesby Ramhari Lamichhane, PhD
Managing TVET During COVID-19 Pandemic (Video)
Background
The society is facing an unprecedented crisis due to threats of a global health pandemic. At the beginning of 2020, an unprecedented blow due to COVID-19 has affected the health of hundreds of thousands of people. It continues to claim lives of people in many parts of the world. Perhaps this is the biggest crisis of the 21st century, with a high number of recorded deaths. As a result, there are widespread learning crisis due to the school closures in many countries. According to UNESCO Global monitoring of schools closures caused by COVID-19 , 188 countries are affected by school closures. As a result, 1.54 Billion learners are unable to attend school and learning activities. The scale of impact is also reflected in TVET sector. With a sudden halt in normal running of technical and vocational schools and training institutions, students, trainees and apprentices, are systematically unable to continue planned learning and training processes.
Figure 1. Global monitoring of school closures. Source: UNESCO
In efforts to mitigate the short term and long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have deployed strategies and approaches corresponding the preparedness of countries to tackle the issue in different fronts. For example, efforts are in place to promote self-isolation of people at home, social-distancing, the closing of shared frontiers, the strict observance of sanitary measures, the restriction of some labour activities, accelerated testing, the closing of schools, universities and prevention of social gatherings All these urgent measures are applied to prevent the worsening of the state of pandemic. However, long-term measures also need to be commenced to manage the serious consequences on the economy, society, culture and education worldwide.
Education and training systems around the globe have started to respond to the situation. Under the circumstances, TVET, an important subset of education and which takes place in secondary, post-secondary and tertiary levels, including work-based learning, continuing training and professional development , cannot be a silent spectator. The essence of how TVET can play an important role in the time of crisis, is discussed in this paper.
How TVET institutions are responding to the crisis
Broadly speaking, the response of education and training systems to the crisis carries two levels of responsibility. The first one acts upon the urgency of the situation (emergency) to avert the occurrence of more serious crisis, with immediate negative effects such as learning interruption that can delay education targets, and systematic entry to the next level of learning or the labour market. The second one acts upon the situation with some stability evidenced in the way temporary measures are working and there are more long-term solution in sight to be developed, to mitigate the far-reaching impact of the crisis. Either way, systems are expected to reach a level of stability with the employed measures, whether they are temporary or long-term to appreciate if the right solutions are meant to stay in place for a long time. In the context of varied developmental structure with specific economic, social and cultural characteristics, the degree of response of institutions is a reflection of their ability to discern the urgency and stability of approach, capacity, the readiness of systems and institutional actors, and availability of resources that suit emergency situations.
Objective
- How to bridge the ongoing interruptions of learning due to the closure of schools
- How to augment the huge shortages in sanitary and life-saving medical products (e.g., protective gears, mask, & ventilators) and similar shortage of service to supply them within short notice
- How to prepare for mindset changes in the post COVID-19 recovery
- How Vocational Excellence approaches validated even in the time of COVID-19?
