Recovering learning, not just lost days

A frustrated mother recently shared on a public online forum that, for almost the entire month of August, her child went to school for only two days. While she acknowledged that classes were canceled for her child's safety, she questioned why there seemed to be no plan for making up the learning time that had been lost. Some teachers asked students to copy lessons into their notebooks without discussing them. Others assigned simple activities and asked students to send a photograph as proof that they had done something at home. The post, which attracted comments from other parents sharing similar experiences, raises an important question: When classes have to be canceled repeatedly, what counts as effective learning continuity? According to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2), Philippine schools have lost as many as 53 instructional days in a single school year due to weather-related class suspensions. That is nearly 30 percent of the 180 instructional days allotted annually. While the school calendar is typically designed with some allowance for disruptions, Edcom 2 has warned that the growing number of cancellations, with more likely to occur as the year progresses, could exceed what can reasonably be absorbed through calendar buffers and alternative delivery modes. Prolonged disruptions could further affect learning outcomes, particularly in literacy, numeracy, science, and math. Students lose momentum, leading to the 'forgetting effect,' where foundational concepts are lost before they can be reinforced. Some teachers may also feel compelled to rush through lessons to meet year-end requirements, resulting in superficial understanding rather than genuine mastery. Young learners, particularly students from Grades 1 to 3, are especially vulnerable. Evidence from school closures has found that younger children, especially those from low-income backgrounds, have greater difficulty accessing and benefiting from remote learning. These students need considerable modeling, feedback, and guided practice from an adult to learn effectively. Not all of them will have access to a parent or guardian who can help them stay on task during remote learning. There is also the question of access to resources. While schools catering to wealthier families may have fewer challenges switching to a seamless online setup, those serving lower-income communities must consider whether all students have access to a gadget, a stable internet connection, and a quiet place to study. Our objective as educators, then, is not to focus on lost hours but on lost learning. The first response after a significant disruption should be to determine what students retained and which prerequisite skills they still need before moving forward. Teachers need to know children's actual learning levels before deciding what to teach next. Schools should resist trying to squeeze in every missed topic or accelerate through all the missed material. International learning-recovery guidance recommends prioritizing foundational literacy and numeracy skills and identifying which competencies are essential for future learning and which topics can be consolidated. Additional instructional time through makeup classes can help. Research shows, however, that rather than trying to replace entire canceled school days, that time should be used strategically for targeted instruction based on students' actual learning needs. Depending on their circumstances, some schools may choose to hold Saturday classes. Others may temporarily extend school days or introduce 30- to 45-minute daily recovery blocks focused on foundational skills. The specific intervention may vary. What matters is that additional time is used to address identified learning gaps instead of simply covering everything that was missed. I have repeatedly stressed in previous columns that school leaders need to have annual learning continuity plans in place and continually revise them based on what worked and what needs improvement. Planning ahead does more than improve preparedness; it also helps reduce another often-overlooked cost of repeated disruptions: teacher burnout. Teachers carry much of the immediate burden when classes are repeatedly disrupted. They face immense pressure to help students cope while simultaneously finding ways to compress lesson plans. They are expected to prepare asynchronous materials and online lessons, communicate with parents, and eventually develop diagnostic tools and plans for reteaching and remediation when students return. Having a system in place means teachers are not left to solve the problem on their own. It also means that the quality of learning continuity will not depend on an individual teacher's resourcefulness and ability to improvise. Our teachers may be the frontliners of learning continuity, but foresight, strategy, coordination, and mobilization are responsibilities of school leadership. The buck stops with us. —————- eleanor@shetalksasia.com