Developing an effective policy response to crisis

The Coronavirus crisis presents many significant immediate and short-term issues for governments and policymakers - causing urgent discussions on how to create a more effective crisis management policy to protect ourselves in future. The health crisis threatens to see hospital beds swamped and healthcare resources drained through a surge in cases requiring specialist facilities and treatment. The economic crisis caused by national or local lockdowns resulting in permanent closure of businesses and rising unemployment. The international scale of the crisis has brought about a slowing of international distribution and markets. This is a challenging outlook for financial and industrial policy, and one which may see significant structural changes to national economies.

What Needs To Be Considered In Effective Policy Making?

New Education Policy

Early evidence shows that the impact of Covid-19 is reversing decades of progress. While governments are understandably focused on the here and now of the crisis, attempting to bring back elements of the economy to pre-Covid levels has got to be a major priority simultaneously. Ministers of Education play a vital role in laying the foundation for years to come in contribution to the crisis management policy, if our education learning gap widens then the future economy inevitably suffers too. Without the proper education and skills gained from school, our society will be inundated with post-education students being forced to go into less academic and innovative career paths. Thus, without this new hub of fresh ideas and talent, our economy will have less opportunity to grow.

What Is Policy Making In Education?

As we’ve seen in this series concerning new crisis management policy, a Ministry of Education’s first priority must be to ensure all children have access to education, opening schools as soon as is achievable after the initial crisis. The impact of the Coronavirus crisis is complex, significant, systemic, and requires a coordinated, coherent, and robust response from government in order to minimise the long-term impact on learners’ futures as well as the nation’s future productivity. The Minister of Education is a lynchpin in coordinating this fightback but must work with colleagues across government to ensure that the crisis management policy is backed with resources and capacity to successfully translate into implementation.

This post outlines a number of key priorities and areas for policymakers to consider when reopening schools after a crisis.
 

Work with schools

Schools, principals, and teachers are the Ministry’s implementation partners. It is only through working collaboratively with these key stakeholders that schools will reopen successfully and safely. The recommendations and guidance in this post are intended to support and reinforce the previous blog for schools.

The relationship between teachers and policymakers can sometimes be strained. Differences should be put aside during a crisis as both parties lean towards their common aim: providing students with a high-quality education. Picking fights with teachers’ or their representatives during a period of heightened stress and not-undue concern is a recipe for disaster.

Ensure Access To Education

In the first weeks of school closures there was a rush to formulate a workable plan for providing students with remote access to education. Some countries moved existing practice wholly online, operating the school timetable as planned; others sought to find a mix between asynchronous lesson materials and real-time teacher interaction, seeking to provide targeted support to those at risk of missing out; others had no option other than to end the academic year early.

As schools reopen there remains a very real risk of closure. In this fragile period, continuity of access to education must be a foundational priority. This requires a degree of forward planning and worst-case preparation on behalf of schools, of course, but the risk this poses is potentially doubling teacher’s workloads as they prepare to deliver lessons either in person or remotely.

Investment in, or coordination of, the development of shared teaching and learning materials can help to make teachers’ workloads more manageable and provide a consistent baseline level of teaching and learning support for students should schools close.

Countries with centrally developed or provided teaching and learning materials will already have a bank of content to reframe as distance learning resources. However, in countries where private companies sell teaching and learning materials, care needs to be taken that government understands the potential impact of its intervention on part of the local economy and crisis management policy. For example, the Oak National Academy was developed through the Department for Education in the UK as a rapid response in an education ecosystem where the government has traditionally not provided centralised curriculum materials. This intervention has largely been welcomed by teachers, but education industry representatives have expressed concern about the potential longer-term impact. Where there is an existing education resource market, public-private partnerships may be a reliable and ready-to-go option for providing quality at scale.

Care must also be given to invest wisely in resources that will be accessible for as many students as possible. There can be a tendency to think that technology is the only possible solution to the issue, but analysis conducted by IIEP-UNESCO suggests that print has been underutilised in the current crisis.

Teachers As Trusted Routes For Communication

Trust in government information is not guaranteed. Research from the OECD showed that public trust in government in OECD countries has been declining over the years, finding that in 2019 only 45% of citizens trusted their government. Other recent studies have reported similar findings, including increasing gaps in levels of trust between different groups within society.

This is a problem for policymakers in achieving effective policy when dealing with crises. The three basic rules for effective communication during recovery are that communication should be relevant, clear, and targeted (Roberts, Mortlock, 2019). This is plainly a more difficult task when a segment of the intended audience is likely to mistrust or ignore these messages.

Research conducted in the UK by Ipsos Mori in 2019 found that despite relatively low levels of trust in the national and local government, business leaders, and the media, 89% of the sample trusted teachers to tell the truth. In fact, teachers were the second most trusted type of individual, after doctors. This is in common with many countries, particularly where teachers have worked with communities. It is therefore important to recognise that teachers can support an emergency response in more than one way, in particular by providing a trusted conduit of relevant, clear, and targeted communications.

Many Ministries of Education already have existing communication routes to teachers. Direct communication, in this instance, can have the added benefit of limited friction and leaving less scope for rumour and misinterpretation.

Consider Most Effective Options For the Deployment Of Teachers

We have seen that teachers play a central role in local communities, which often goes well beyond simply delivering lessons in the classroom. In some countries, where school closures moved the classroom timetable online, teachers’ workloads remained at comparable levels to when schools were open. However, in other countries – and particularly in cases where there is a high level of centralised curriculum content provided as support – teachers found their workload dropped significantly. As noted in a 2015 review of the impact of Ebola:

While those in waged employment (mainly men) – for example, in the education sector in public schools – have been maintained on the payroll, those in self-employment (mainly women) have lost their incomes with the closure of businesses.
Ebola Impact Revealed: An Assessment of the Differing Impact of the Outbreak on Women and Men in Liberia; Dala T Korkoyah, Jr, Francis F Wreh, UN Women, Oxfam, Ministry of Gender and Development, July 2015

In these instances, it makes good sense to redeploy teaching staff to support local needs. In particular, this is an opportunity to expand teachers’ roles in safeguarding, data collection, and distribution of health and feeding programmes beyond the confines of the school premises. This can help to ensure regular contact with students, in particular those who might be most at risk of dropping out of education.

However, consideration must be given to teachers’ workloads. The provision of centralised teaching and learning content does not necessarily mean that teachers’ work magically disappears. Communication with schools must be two-way, providing policymakers with a realistic assessment of current workloads and local circumstances.

Make Hard Decisions On Policy Making In Education Early

Effective crisis response requires rapid action, and often decisions that would – in the normal course of political life – be difficult and painful. The ‘rally round the flag’ effect was originally coined by John Mueller in relation to US foreign policy, but has been seen to be broadly applicable to local incumbents facing unexpected crises. For example, governments around the world generally saw a surge in approval ratings in the early days of the coronavirus crisis. This temporary boost provides greater headroom for rapid and radical crisis policy action than later in the emergency.

Understanding The Likely Scale And Depth Of A Crisis

The first and most important step is to take a realistic assessment of the scale of the crisis., and ask ourselves ‘What makes an effective policy?’. This is a fine balance: it is tempting to take a rose-tinted view that underplays the seriousness of a crisis such as the current pandemic, but equally overplaying a crisis has an adverse effect on public sentiment and may result in the wasting of resources.

A carefully selected group of experts who can offer informed guidance is essential. The local context and circumstances must be understood. This is obviously the case for a very localised crisis, such as an earthquake or industrial accident, but should not be ignored for a more wide-ranging crisis. When a crisis is national or international and visible from the seat of politics – usually the capital city; usually affluent and well-connected; usually with a greater share of tertiary workers than is the national norm – it can be easy to overlook the nature of the crisis in regions with very different terrain or demographics.

The first thing to establish is how long the disruption to access to schools will be and a timeframe for re-opening schools. This establishes two things:

1. The duration of contingency access to education
2. A baseline for realistically expectation for understanding the impact to children’s learning

This assessment can be used to help inform the short-term response (i.e. what policy, action, and support is needed to secure interim access to learning), and the shape of the medium-term response (i.e. how long the impact of the disruption will be felt for once schools are open again, and how long measures will need to be in place to get learning back on track).

Providing The Support Needed To Reopen Schools

As discussed elsewhere in this series, after health and safety, access to education must be the priority of a crisis response. Reopening schools as soon as is safe and viable is the surest way of achieving this.

Where schools are damaged or dangerous, careful consideration must be given to rebuilding. This kind of crisis may be used as an opportunity to improve access to quality resources and infrastructure and to leapfrog development in afflicted areas. If there are safe, usable public buildings, or open spaces, school may be able to return before building work has completed.

Where schools are undamaged, but present a health and safety risk, as in the current phase of the pandemic, schools need a range of support from central government, including:

• Capital to meet new requirements, such as additional hygiene measures.
• Clear, implementation-focused, timely guidelines for how to manage the return to school and the day-to-day operation of the school.
• Freedom and flexibility to adapt the approach to suit the local context, within clear specified parameters.

Principals need clarity and transparency in order to implement the necessary changes in their schools. This can present a challenge to governments, which typically prefer to deal in certainties than unknowns. However, this is an essential element of effective crisis communication, which ‘has also been highlighted as a hallmark of high-reliability organizations’ (Hutchins, Annulis, Gaudet, 2008).

How To Identify Risks In The Education Policy Making Process And Beyond

What happens when schools have reopened? It can be tempting to think that this is mission accomplished and that life will slip back to normal, but depending on the nature of the crisis and the length of the school closure, ‘normal’ may be some way off. Even before schools have reopened, it is imperative that the Ministry of Education takes a medium-term view of the likely challenges ahead and begins putting plans in place for a revised crisis management policy.

For example, in for schools reopening in the pandemic, the elements policymakers must consider include (but are not limited to) the following:
 

• Recovery curriculum: clear expectations are required to support the return to school; it is important that the Ministry of Education acknowledges anticipated learning loss and sets out a realistic plan to help students close the gap.
• Local school closures: under what circumstances would a school need to close? What provision is in place for continuity of learning in the event of local school closures? How can access to education be assured when all students are out of school?
• Individual or groups needing to self-isolate: what happens if there is an outbreak that can be contained within a specific group? What provision is in place in the event of students and staff needing to self-isolate? How can access to education be assured when some students are out of school?
• Exams: which cohorts of students will encounter high-stakes exams during the anticipated timeframe of the crisis? What measures can be put in place to maintain reliability and validity of national assessments, yet be fair to learners who have had their learning interrupted? How will the assessments manage different levels of interruption – for example, if some cohorts of students miss more school through a higher rate of suspected or identified cases than others?
• Access to testing: the evidence on children’s susceptibility and ability to spread Covid-19 has evolved over the months, but it is clear that an effective testing and tracing system is essential to control the spread of the virus. There are policy effectiveness questions about who to prioritise in a testing regime and how to manage the risk of infection spread while waiting for test results. Both of these have clear links to the finance and healthcare crisis management policy.
• Financial consequences for parents: decisions that affect children’s attendance are also likely to have implications for parents. If a child is self-isolating, must their parents also stay home from work? What financial support is available for parents who are self-isolating? (It is important to acknowledge that without financial support, many parents who are not able to work remotely will simply not be able to comply with the self-isolation guidelines.) What happens to families who find themselves with additional childcare alongside what work they can perform from home?

Accept That Not Everything IS Knowable And Ensure Your Communications Acknowledge This

Much of the Ministry of Education’s early response to a crisis is based on a pre-existing understanding of the education system, local context, and anticipation of the ways in which the crisis will affect infrastructure, schools, children, and families. It is only to be expected that unanticipated issues will arise as the crisis unfolds.

Regular communication with schools is imperative. Teachers are highly trusted, and it is to be expected that communities will look to schools, principals, and teachers for advice and guidance. Any communications strategy should consider official channels (i.e. messages formulated by government and distributed through government-owned channels, such as TV, radio, etc.) and informal channels (i.e. messages disseminated through the community). In this instance, schools become a semi-official channel – teachers are, more often than not, government employees, but with a much deeper relationship with the local community than most other government functionaries. 

When Keeping Schools Informed, It’s Important To Be Conscious Of:

1. The intended priority message
2. Where there may be gaps in knowledge
3. Where information or messages may evolve

Remember that schools will likely have a limited bandwidth for absorbing a great deal of information or understanding nuances in technical details alongside their other work. Be clear, be transparent, and be memorable.

Developing A National Crisis Management Policy In Case Of A Repeat Emergency

If there are no pre-existing national action plans to secure access to education in the event of a crisis, the Ministry of Education should seek to draw them up as soon as practicable. If there are pre-existing national action plans, they should be reviewed in the light of the crisis. Did the crisis reveal any gaps that need addressing? Are they sufficiently implementation focused and pragmatic? Now is the time to make sure the system is better prepared for the next crisis.

Make Disadvantaged And Vulnerable Learners Your Priority

We have seen that crises affect the poorest and most vulnerable children in society most negatively. When functioning normally, schools are a valuable source of data to help policymakers understand the nature of the student cohort. Ministries of Education should be able to quickly identify the groups of students who are most at risk during a crisis.

These students must be policymakers’ priority. Crises such as the current pandemic drive a wedge into existing inequalities, leaving a legacy of educational scarring on the students who are least protected from it.
 

Making Education A Priority For All

When at-risk and vulnerable children are taken out of school, they are more likely to remain out of school than the general population. Cultural factors play into this, of course, but the economic imperative is a key deciding factor. Economically disadvantaged families rarely have the financial means to weather a crisis, and may be amongst the first to lose jobs in a sustained crisis. They are therefore less likely to be able to afford for a child to attend school when they could be earning money, even if this means that the family is more likely to remain poor in the long-term.

Education Ministers must work closely with their counterparts in the Ministry of Finance to lobby for adequate and timely financial support for the most vulnerable families so that keeping children in education remains a financially viable option.

Make no mistake: this is an expensive course of action. However, it is a course of action that will repay itself many times over the years through the tax returns and lower social welfare costs that come from today’s students earning more in the future.

Social Messaging

Reducing the financial incentives to take children out of education will help, but it may be necessary to also ensure there is messaging around the importance of keeping at-risk students in education. This is particularly important for ensuring the continuing education of girls.

Effective dissemination of this kind of message must consider the different stakeholders within society. As with crisis communications, official government channels play a role, but so do local religious and cultural leaders, local government, and schools.

Connections with these disparate groups of stakeholders may not be the natural preserve of Ministries of Education. However, there will be contact points elsewhere within government or in schools, and the Ministry of Education should play a central role in coordinating and advocating for the importance of access to education for all.

Consider The Long Term

In the heat of a crisis it can be difficult to find time to take a longer view, but it is vital to ensure that the government education policy continues to serve the needs of young people and the country’s future economy.

How Will The Crisis Affect Future Economic Policy And Needs

Few crises will have significant long-lasting effects on the national economy. Some crises will have a medium-term impact on the local economy. Many crises will have a limited short-term impact.

However, it is important to assess realistically whether a crisis will prompt a significant change in the economy, especially as it evolves. For example, economists’ views of the economic recovery from the current pandemic have shifted over time, depending on how badly affected a region has been. Increasingly, at least in the UK, the view is that the crisis has precipitated some longer-term structural shifts in the economy.

Where this is the case, policymakers must consider education through two lenses:

1. How to prepare the current cohort of students for the anticipated skills demand of the future economy
2. How to support out-of-work adults to retrain for the new shape of the economy

This second point is often over-looked. When an economy is structurally altered by events, a significant portion of the current in-work population may find themselves out of work and needing to retrain. In the case of adult education, there is a much shorter window between reskilling and productive deployment in the workplace, which can help smooth the economic readjustment and recovery more quickly.

Use The Crisis To Spur Long-Term Meaningful Change

I began this series with the grim prediction that Covid-19 would shape education policy for the next ten years. However, far from being a lost decade, this could be an opportunity for policymakers to grasp the nettle and take bold action.

Time and again in this series we have returned to the issue of pre-existing disadvantage and the impact a crisis has on those most vulnerable in society. These issues are often well-known, even before the crisis struck. For example: disparities in access to education between students in remote locations and those in urban areas; differences in the quality of education between middle-class students in well-funded private schools and those in deprived urban neighbourhoods; stark differences between test scores achieved by segments of the student cohort.

A crisis shines a spotlight on these difficult and often long-standing issues. This urgent attention is then an opportunity. It is a chance to build a powerful crisis communication policy and align government, policymakers, donors, funders, and implementation partners to help improve the life opportunities for the most vulnerable in society.

As Winston Churchill, echoing the sentiment of 16th century Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli, said during the darkest days of World War II: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’