UKAPES Covid-19 Response

As advocates of education through teacher development and enhanced pedagogy, the current global pandemic constitutes serious concern to us. COVID 19, otherwise known as Coronavirus is known to be a highly infectious virus originating from China that has spread to different parts of the world within weeks restricting global travel, businesses and livelihoods, its latest effect causing tough decisions made by government to close schools and cancel scheduled exams.

After lockdown was imposed on Wuhan, China to contain the spread of the virus, it has successfully curtailed infections but trickled to some parts of Europe including Italy and Spain. There are possibilities that more lockdowns based on its positive impact in China will be imposed on cities and towns where increasing numbers of people are testing positive leading to drastic measures that include school closures, event cancellations, skeletal public transportation and calls to work from home. Very serious decisions impacting on peoples’ lives have raised serious concerns about the socio-economic and academic effect of the virus, the latest being the substitution of face to face teaching with online learning.

It is under this backdrop that UKAPES is compelled to respond. As young people are preparing for assessments under the inconvenience caused by the virus, many teachers have chosen to self-isolate. With due acknowledgement, teacher absence is known to have the opposite effect of raising outcomes depleting progression and indeed opportunities for students. Although school authorities are quick to move lessons online, it triggers the question of the teachers’ ability to design and post learning online for student access. Monitoring, marking and feedback constitute another challenge in addition to tracking. These skills remain a challenge to thousands of teachers across the African continent, thus marginalising opportunities for African students.

UKAPES is hereby offering online learning in the core subjects of Mathematics and English Language to interested schools, teachers and students. Priority will be given to students who are scheduled to write exams in the next few weeks and those who have smart devices with regular and sufficient data to enable the learning process. Due to some limitations, access will be given on a first come, first served basis. If teachers are particularly interested in accessing some interactive web-based resources to share with large cohorts of students, please do clarify in your enquiries, so that log ins can be generated and issued accordingly. All interested parties are welcome to enter details on bit.ly/ukapesonline and all queries are to be forwarded to info@ukapes.org

We look forward to working with schools and students in these unprecedented times for the main purpose of raising immediate outcomes for all and especially those preparing to write exams in the next few weeks. We wish everyone good health and peace as we globally fight COVID 19 (Coronavirus).

3 thoughts on “UKAPES Covid-19 Response

  1. This is a profound report by the UKAPES founder Joyce Elemson. We all feel the global impacts of COVID 19 on school closure. A great number of students in African countries have no access to smart phones or gadgets to continue with their learning online from home. Sadly, those students who cannot afford a smart phone are more disadvantaged than those in the UK at this global pandemic crisis. So, how can we help the disadvantaged students?

    1. Thanks for the comments. If internet data is affordable to the disadvantaged, then priority should be placed on providing data for young people to access online learning. From this end, web based interactive resources could be made remotely available to ensure learning continuity.

    2. In Sierra Leone the government was offering distance learning using radio programs. Some schools were offering workbooks. Parents and guardians were asked to collect the workbooks giving the responsibility to parents to supervise their children. It was at a disadvantage to some children, at the same time an advantage to others. Dispute the challenges, primary school children excel in their NPSE results. The government is aware a lot of effort is required to ensure quality education is fit for purpose during this difficult period. On the other hand the school who attempt Zoom classes had challenges with connectivity. Despite the challenges children are eager to learn and parents are willing to support their children reach their full potential. During this period teachers, parents and government need to work together in partnership.

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