South Sudan: Adapting new Approaches to Provide Quality Education during the COVID-19
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The author, Ustaz John Garang Ayii Riak, is a Master’s Degree Student on Comparative Education Program, Zhejiang Normal University, East China
By Ustaz John Garang Ayii Riak, Bor, Jonglei State
The whole world is changing to a new approaches and realitiesthat were unbelievable last five months ago. The COVID-19 has changed all the dimensions of human life, presenting suddenapproaches and changes to the way governments, schools, businesses, and societies function. A previous virtual summit of G-20 leaders highlighted the moving and changing eras. The COVID-19 has affected education methods and systems worldwide, forcing over 1.5 billion learners out of primary and secondary schools, and tertiary educations.
The disaster brings a very vital thinking point for education managers and leaders to question the position quo and discover new approaches for providing quality education to billions of pupils and students worldwide. However, my country South Sudan seemed to be static and stagnant in this situation and has no plan toward adapting new approaches to provide quality education in response to COVID-19’s times. This raises many questions from concerned citizens how the future of this country will look like during and after COVID-19.
How can the government and international education partners’use this moment as an opportunity to “build” and meet the pressures of the national’s future?
The answer for the above question is to think critically about future of South Sudan in relation to the current situation because future of the nation lies in today. If we don’t prepare now then, future will be dull. So we need to come up with many responses how to facilitate education and if there is a problem beyond government ability, then the government can call for humanitarian interventions because the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence boil down to the following: protecting and respecting individuals; prioritizing the most urgent cases of distress; making no distinctions based on nationality; and, taking timely action independent from political, economic crisis or other objectives. This is what I believed is a way; we can run schools in the present of COVID-19 despite our inability and lack of ICT accessories, and other electronic devices. We have qualified teachers who can do something unique for the irreplaceable situation and to solution the exceptional problem like this one of COVID-19.
The only problem the social media exaggerated the COVID-19and makes it to be bigger than an elephant and zoomed bigger. But when we like at it critically, it’s can be a small animal like rat and make it harmless, we can learn from Chinese how they handled it now and the life has come back to normalcy in China, hotels, schools, business and everything is operating normally.
My daily principle is that there is no problem without solution I believe beyond reasonable double that COVID-19 is not stronger more than HIV and let me ask our leaders that in thepresent of killer HIV/ AIDs, did people stop sex or producing children. And HIV is believed to be transmitted through sex. But people still enjoy it and people are producing children in spites of the presence of HIV/ AIDs. So I wish all education institutions should also operate in this situation with new teaching pedagogy as I put it in my article last month.
At the presence, we should be driven to better understand howquality education should be provided across the states in South Sudan. Similar to the multi stakeholders’ approach required to address the pandemic and to facilitate education at this situation need strong leaders and the 21st Century teachers from diverse sectors that should work toward a common goal of delivering education services. How will this thing be achieved and play a vital role out in a real time? And how can lessons learned be captured and shared to inform related efforts?
Government should call all the educationists and experts in education and ask them how the education can be facilitated in this critical time? Teachers know many teaching methods that can be used in a given time, we teachers, we are like doctors; they know which medicine can be given to a patient under every circumstance and how it can work effectively? There are many options to run the education during COVID-19, and we can impose on learners to adopt them.
But we cannot just say we and our students do not have computers and electronic devices, when will we have them? This is the real time that we should force both students and parents to buy laptops and smart phones for learning purposes. This is a matter of enacting new education policy for learning and teaching process in response to COVID-19 and I wish Hon. Ministers of the Ministries of the HE and MoGEI should just enact the policy and bless it. To impose it into implementation is a work for teachers rather than they sit while folding hands and waiting for the COVID-19 to go away.
My countrymen, who told you that COVID-19 is gonna go? It will remain with us for years like malaria and HIV and the rests of other diseases. Therefore, we should be pro-thinking of it and plan counter measures in every sector in order we should operate with competing challenges and we shall tackle these challenges one by one until we hear that things are okay. Then, we may return to traditional way of teaching. Adapting new approaches to provide quality education during the COVID-19 should beguided by the notion of adaptive learning. This means understanding local contexts, being flexible when plans change, and systematically learning along the way. A number of key actions underpin an adaptive learning approach, such as experimenting with new approaches, leveraging deep roots within communities, sharing knowledge, and embracing windows of opportunity.
Adapting new approaches government and international education partners should take actions to ensure children and young people continue to receive an education, particularly in response to COVID-19. While the safety of both teachers and learners should be top priority, it is inspiring to observe how partners remain committed to their mission of supporting beneficiaries by using an adaptive learning approach during this challenging time. While closed schools are closed, government and International education partners should also collect students’ mobile numbers to provide text-message based instruction, and established hotlines to answer questions from parents and students.
They should also use television and radio programs to deliverand provide proven life-saving messages. Medical and education experts should also be assigned to develop educational teaching content and strategies how to support countrywide distance learning, and working with government officials to plan for implementing these new approaches through the ICT, because the ICT is important because it makes you feel more secure with every area in life for both personal and business reasons.
With ICT advancing more people are able to have access to supplies such as fresh water and food because technology can help deliver those items to people that otherwise couldn’t get itand therefore, let’s bring out light from the immense darkness through ICT in whatever we do. For this reason, I strongly believe that the world will not be the same again after Corona Virus; people should change their mind sets and attitudes in the way they think and do work due to the ICT’s innovation. The ICT is always a fast and convenient means of teaching, learning and working process for now during the COVID-19 and it will remain for the rests of human’s history, so people should take advantage of using the ICT and distance learning.
Conclusively, distance learning should remain as a recommendable teaching method in response to COVID-19 and adapting new approaches to provide quality education is a roadmap in response to this crisis in the nation.
The author, Ustaz John Garang Ayii Riak, is a holder of Master’s Degree in International Comparative Education from Zhejiang Normal University, China and a Bachelor’s Degree of Arts with Education from Bugema University; Kampala Uganda. He works as a Teacher at Dr. John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology in Bor Town, Jonglei State. This article absolutely reflects his own opinion and not for the institution he works for. He is one of the South Sudanese ardent writers on education issues. This article absolutely reflects his own opinion and not for the institution he works for. He can be reached at (johngayii2014@gmail.com)
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