The information on this website was collected by the World Bank’s Edtech team during the initial response of education systems (“coping phase”) to school closings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data shown on this page corresponds to resources, initiatives, programs and events collected from March 2020 to June 2020.

The resources on this page remain available but will not be updated. For more information about the phases of “managing continuity” and “improving and accelerating”, please visit the Lessons For Education during the COVID-19 crisis site. 

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The World Bank is actively working with ministries of education in dozens of countries in support of their efforts to utilize educational technologies of all sorts to provide remote learning opportunities for students while schools are closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is in active dialogue with dozens more.

In support of this work, the World Bank is cataloguing emerging approaches, by country, in an internal database. In case related information may be useful to others, we are sharing excerpts from this database here.

AFGHANISTAN​

​The Directorate of Technical a​nd Vocational Education has put out TVET guidelines called “Alternative Education Scheme for Persistence of ‘Corona Virus’ in the Country​”. The guidelines discuss three scenarios of the continued impact of COVID-19 in Afghanistan for different time spans: for one to two months; for three to six months; and, for more than six months. In response to the three scenarios outlined, the Directorate has created a plan for TVET in the country. Given the current situation, distance learning with a combination of multimedia, video and print media is suggested, focused on using local solutions to avoid dependencies. Due to the existing infrastructure, the option of using broadcast media (video and audio) using various tools to be available to students, especially in high schools and grade 13th and 14th, is considered a reasonable option both during the school closure period. But, this is a matter of concern once schools reopen. The guidelines propose different alternatives based on the anticipated three scenarios. Some of these alternative options include printing and distributing chapters of textbooks; broadcasting video lessons through television and radio; broadcasting videos through websites, portals, social media (Facebook and YouTube); making videos available via memory cards and CDs; or audio lessons through the medium of mobile phones. The MoE is planning to create educational videos as well.

ARGENTINA

Educ.ar is the educational portal of the Ministry of Education of Argentina aimed at providing curated digital resources for teachers, administrators, students and families. The program “Seguimos Educando” developed by the Ministry of Education and the Secretariat of Media and Public Communication, began broadcasting educational content from April 1, 2020. Seguimos Educando airs 14 hours a day of television content and 7 hours a day of radio content specially produced for students as a result of school closures. For both radio and television, each lesson broadcast will have the presence of a teacher and a conductor (journalist, artist, scientist), in addition to the dissemination of teaching materials. The television broadcasts premiered on the public channels and then also broadcast by private, provincial, university, cooperative and community channels. Radio Nacional and its 49 subsidiaries throughout the country have been broadcasting 7 programs daily of 1 hour each.

For students without access technology or connectivity, this television and radio programming is supplemented with notebooks packed with learning resources that have been delivered to homes of these students. 9 notebooks have been developed for this purpose – 2 notebooks are for pre-primary levels, 4 for primary levels, 2 for secondary level and 1 for the family.

The program also makes available a collection of on-demand digital educational materials and resources on the Educ.ar website under the ‘Seguimos Educando’ section. Seguimos Educando which aptly translates to “continuing to educate” is organized by educational level and subject area in a student-friendly manner appropriate for the school closure period. The platform includes self-learning resources, suggestions for families and teachers, films, interviews, educational and communication proposals through social networks and videoconferencing tools, agendas for online events as well as proposals for free time for students.

The portal has interesting features. For example, it has a section on the website called “the class of the day” where it provides a comprehensive daily proposal for student learning in combination with the educational television program and a series of printed notebooks. It also has a section on virtual reality which provides a collection of videos in 360° format aimed at allowing the user to have an immerse educational experience.

To ensure that this school closure does not exacerbate inequity in access to these learning resources, Argentina has zero-rated its Educ.ar education portal. “Through ENACOM, telephone companies have guaranteed that browsing the digital platform will be free of charge, it will not consume data” said the Minister of Education.

To expand access to technology and reduce the digital divide for students in Argentina, the Ministry of Education has signed agreements for the distribution of netbooks and tablets in regions with stronger socio-economic vulnerabilities in Buenos Aires municipalities. The municipalities will coordinate the distribution of this technological material to be delivered to schools for students of the first year of the upper cycle of the secondary level in state-run educational institutions. A total of 55,000 netbooks and 22,000 tablets will be distributed to ten provinces of Norte Grande. The netbooks, which will contain information with pedagogical resources, can also be used to access the digital platform Seguimos Educando, both offline and online, during COVID-19.

AUSTRIA​

A large number of content offerings have been compiled on the Ministry of Education’s website. ​

Learning platforms like Moodle and LMS are being used, as well as cloud solutions from companies such as Microsoft and Google. The content platform Eduthek, developed by the Ministry, offers learning and exercise material from external providers for kindergarten and pupils of all school levels to practise at home and to deepen their knowledge.  Currently numerous publishers and providers from schoolbooks are offering some of their content free of charge.

Since 18 March 2020, the public TV station ORF 1 has been offering a special education program for students at all school levels. Every morning between 6-9 am the program for pre-school and primary school children is broadcast. Afterward, the three-hour programme “ORF-1-Freistunde” offers an educational programme for students aged 10+. Documentaries, informational segments and explanatory videos are shown, as well as a news format specially designed for this target group. Students can express their questions and needs and contribute with videos and messages. The programs are also offered in the “Mediathek” for the duration of school closings.

Based on the experience of the first two weeks of school closures, the Ministry is taking additional efforts to improve the efficiency of digital learning environment services. Currently the Ministry is working on a concept with guidelines for distance learning and on a concept for a Distance Learning Service Portal as a Single Point of Entry for teachers and school manager.

There are also regional initiatives: The City of Vienna now offers its free “Support 2.0” tutoring initiative for 10-14 year olds online, consisting of additional support in the German, mathematics and English for lower secondary schools. These courses, previously offered kin schools, are now held virtually.

Counseling: School psychologists can be reached by telephone or e-mail. Currently psychological counselling is also available during evening hours and weekends. There are also counselling services (in 23 different languages!) for people who do not speak German.

Assessment: There is no performance assessment at the moment; assessment will most likely continue when students return to school.

BANGLADESH

The state-owned Television network in Bangladesh​, Bangladesh Television (BTV), started broadcasting education television lessons for students for grades six to ten​. The program, called “My School at My Home” broadcasts daily from 9.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. local time. These television lessons can also be accessed as on-demand content on the Bangladesh Television YouTube channel.

To ensure that learning continues from home during school closures, the Government is working with UNICEF to help implement effective remote learning programmes using TV, radio, mobile phone and Internet platforms. As part of this collaboration, UNICEF will support parents and caregivers with information on supporting children with learning at home.

BELIZE

As of the announcement on March 18th, 2020, all schools have been closed from March 20th for 2 weeks at the minimum.

The Primary School Examinations scheduled for March 30, 2020 and April 30, 2020 have been suspended. The regional body responsible for CSEC examination for high-school students and CAPE examinations for tertiary level students, namely the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), has put out an updated strategy to cope with school closures. This involves a modified examination process as follows. First, there will be administration of at least one common paper (Multiple Choice Assessments). Second, there will be School Based Assessments (SBAs) and an alternative to SBA for private candidates. Third, final grades will be awarded based on student performance on school based assessments and multiple choice assessments. e-Testing modality (online and offline) will be employed in order to reduce the examination administration processing time to enable quick turn-around time for marking and release of examination results. While the proposed revised administration schedule, previously for the May/June 2020 examinations, has now been updated to July 2020, the CXC will update this date based on guidance from the central government.

In light of region-wide disruptions of the academic term and examinations, CXC is well placed to facilitate continuous learning through the CXC e-Learning Hub. It provides learners and instructors with a single access point to multiple resources and a space for learners, educators, parents and employers to access multiple high-quality resources supporting teaching, learning and assessment. Resources cater to varying learning styles and students can explore written content as well as videos and slideshows. Resources include past papers, interactive syllabuses (including specimen papers and mark schemes), digital toolkits, subject reports and exemplar student responses. Through the CXC Learning Hub, teachers are able to create virtual classrooms where they can interact directly with students, in real time, incorporating content available on the CXC Learning Hub as well as their own content developed to support teaching and learning.

In addition, the Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture hosts detailed daily schedules and resources for students from preschool to grade 6 within language and mathematics. Each day’s schedule comes equipped with video lessons of teachers teaching along with lesson plans, questions for parents to ask children, worksheets, assignments, learning activities for younger students involving their family members, as well as further self-paced interactive videos for older students.

BERMUDA 

The priority for the Department of Education is to ensure that educational activities continue through the extension of the school closures. Government has extended the “shelter-in-place” regime until May 2, 2020 and schools will resume the remote learning programs​. The Department will continue to provide updates through its Facebook page, email, school apps, social media, and its website.

The website also provides guidance to parents and caregivers on supporting remote learning at home. The Commissioner of Education also uses the website to share letters of encouragement with parents to keep morale high.

Physical copies of learning packets will be provided for students who do not have access to connectivity (device or the Internet) to ensure that all students are engaged in learning during the lockdown. These learning packets will be delivered to their roadside mailboxes by post office staff.

School teachers and principals are tasked with continuing to support parents/caregivers and students during the school closure period by being responsive to all queries from them.

The Department of Education also created a feedback form for all the members of the public education community in Bermuda to share their questions, concerns or suggestions. The Commissioner of Education also encourages parents to use this feedback form if they wish to communicate with her office directly.

BHUTAN

The Ministry of Education (MoE) launched  the Bhutan e-Learning program​. This started on March 27, 2020 allows students from PreK-12 to access lessons through educational television as well as on YouTube. The broadcasting schedules are published on the MoE website.

​Some schools in the country are using online tools such Google classrooms and G Suite to continue the learning process from home. The need to reduce data charges increased after Google classrooms became much more widely used due to the closure of schools. Different Telcos, like Bhutan Telecom (BT) and TashiCell​, are working with the government to provide additional data for students. The reduction in data charges will be effective for certain educational content and tools.​ The Druk Holding and Investments (DHI) is providing free data for people in quarantine. The Ministry of Information and Communications is also working with the education ministry and the telecom service providers to facilitate data access for eLearning for students across the country. The main source for accessing the internet is through the mobile phones in Bhutan.

Other schools are using social media applications like Wechat or WhatsApp, where teachers assign students with specific chapters to read and a set of questions to respond to. Students are required to answer the questions and send an image of their answers back to teachers to assess. Schools across the country are also collecting data on the number of students with access to the Internet, smart phones, and  television.

The Ministry of Education presented its ‘guidelines for curriculum implementation plan for education in emergency (EiE)’ related to the implementation of e-Learning in school education, roles and responsibility of different stakeholders, early childhood care and development and special education needs, non-formal education, reaching the unreached through print media, and volunteer teachers of Bhutan.​ UNICEF Bhutan is working with the education ministry to ensure that education continuity is implemented in the current emergency context, ​through the national broadcaster, Bhutan Broadcasting Service.

BOLIVIA 

A resource series called ¡Listos a Jugar!, which translates to Ready to Play!,  has been developed and deployed in collaboration with Sesame Workshop and UNICE to provide guidance to parents/caregivers to promote healthy lifestyle habits for children.

The Government of Bolivia, in collaboration with the United Nations and the Fundacion para el Periodismo, has created a special section within the Bolivia Verifica portal, to search for and report misinformation on COVID-19. The portal can be accessed from the Ministry of Education website  where students and parents/caregivers can find related COVID-19 related information.

BRAZIL​

The Futura Chanel has some curated content in their YouTube channel.

The states of Amazonas and Pará have launched a strategy relying heavily on the use of educational television (the Brazilian Amazon region has a long tradition on this, dating back to the 1970s). Their content is also available in their YouTube channel, and is complemented with their online platform.

The State of Amazonas has produced guidelines for systems managers, teachers, students and parents​.

BULGARIA​

The Ministry of Education and Science launched an e-learning system (starting on March 16, 2020). Publishers provide online textbooks from grades 1-10 for free. Regional educational institutions are supporting 65,000 teachers and over 700,000 students through videos and webinars. School education content is being broadcast through the channels BNT 2 and BNT 4.

Nearly 89% of students are enrolled in e-learning. Each student is enrolled in distance learning six hours a day, including through broadcast lessons on national television channels. Parents assist pedagogical specialists in the implementation of the instructions and tasks set, and support younger children with equipment issues and provide opportunities for their children to watch lessons on Bulgarian national television.

To support distance learning, the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) has developed a National Electronic Library of Teachers (e-Content Repository), which publishes materials of pedagogical specialists for working in e-learning environments, including video lessons, training programs, innovative methodologies, tests, films, exercises, entertaining pedagogy and presentations, as well as projects related to both independence in performing in an electronic environment, as well as with research, student work, curiosity, motivating elements, feedback, group and individual work, creation and the application of a variety of skills.

All schools have been sent accounts to work on the Microsoft Teams platform, which is free of charge. Profiles have been created for all students and teachers. A helpdesk and a phone for questions at the MES are provided.

Each higher education institution independently organizes the distance learning process of its students by using various online platforms and video conferencing software through which distance learning sessions are conducted, as well as other communication channels. Programs such as Office 365, Skype, Blackboard are used. Access and cloud services are being created.

On the website of the Ministry of Education and Science, there is information about a “telephone e-education” service to answer questions and provide suggestions related to the educational process.

The government is updating legislation concerning grading and assessment in order to take into account the distance learning context.

CAMBODIA  

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in cooperation with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) launched Think! Think!, an educational programme to provide free online lessons to young students. The Ministry aims to broadcast this content as education TV programming via Satellite Decho TV (DTV) in the near future, to reach students with no access to the Internet or related devices. The Think! Think! program along with 15,000 types of new puzzle games are being made available on the ministry’s Facebook pages (MoEYS Cambodia and Krou Cambodia) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:00-5:30 pm.​

The Minister of Information and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) are working together to broadcast distance learning and online learning programs on National Television of Kampuchea (TVK) and Ministry of Information’s mobile app. This aim is to ensure equitable learning for all Cambodian students. Cambodian DTV Network Limited has given the MoEYS access to 10 satellite DTV dishes for this.

This education TV programming has begun to broadcast on  National Television of Kampuchea and other cable TV networks throughout the country, such as a newly created TVK2 for educational broadcasting, Decho DTV’s channel 22, and 55 new cable TV networks. This programing will support learning for students in kindergarten, primary and secondary school. Students in Grades 9 through 12, who are preparing for upcoming national examinations, are being provided with three hours of programming each day.

Students can also access this content on demand via different digital platforms of the Ministry of Education – its mobile app, YouTube channel, Facebook page as well as eLearning Centres. They can also downloading video lessons from e-School Cambodia ​and Wiki School Apps.

CHILE

In Chile, the Aptus platform hosts digital learning materials.  A team from the Chilean Ministry of Education has made this content available to other countries in the region to deal with the closure of schools. ​Some of these materials include free class videos produced in Chile for children from ages 4-13 years (especially useful for teaching literacy).

CHINA

The following information is excerpted from the very useful UNESCO article, How is China ensuring learning when classes are disrupted by coronavirus?​

On February 9, nearly 200 million primary and secondary school students in China started their new semester – online. With all schools closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, the country embarked on what might amount to the largest simultaneous online learning exercise in human history. ​ The Ministry of Education launched an initiative entitled “Ensuring learning undisrupted when classes are disrupted.”  Over the course of two weeks, with all face-to-face meetings banned, the Ministry organized teleconferences with school management agencies, online platform and course providers, telecom providers and other stakeholders to plan the implementation of the initiative.

To enable this, the Ministry of Education partnered with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in order to:

  • Mobilize all major telecom service providers to boost internet connectivity service for online education, especially for the under-served regions.
  • Upgrade the bandwidth of major online education service platforms, especially the capacity of the National Cloud-Platform for Educational Resources and Public Service in serving millions of visitors simultaneously.
  • ​Mobilize society-wide resources for the provision of online courses and resources. More than 24,000 online courses have been made accessible for university students. 22 validated online course platforms, most them empowered by Artificial Intelligence, have been mobilized to provide primary and secondary schools with free online courses.
  • Adopt flexible and appropriate methodologies to facilitate learning. Schools and teachers are advised to choose appropriate modes of delivery based on local e-readiness, including online platforms, digitalized TVs or mobile Apps. Teachers have received guidance on teaching methodologies including through live-streaming of online tutorials and MOOCs. The recommended number of online learning hours varies by grade.
  • Strengthen online security through collaboration with the telecom sector and online platform service providers.
  • ​Provision of psycho-social support and courses to impart knowledge about the virus and protection against it.

More about the National Cloud-Platform for Educational Resources and Public Service of China.

​​​COLOMBIA 

In Colombia, the preventive quarantine started the week of March 16, 2020, and the academic calendar was adjusted as a result. For the first two weeks, teachers were given time to prepare a pedagogical plan, in order to develop and create activities and tasks for the students, classes restarted ‘at a distance’ on March 20, 2020, with attention to two realities. Families with Internet access and technology resources have access to “aprender digital“, a platform of the Ministry of Education with more than 80,000 digital learning resources, organized by grades, in different modalities (games, videos, etc.), accessible by for teachers, principals, and other actors, covering pre-primary to middle school education. For families who don’t have access to the Internet, the government is designing a kit to learn from home (“kit de aprendizaje en casa”), also organized by grade, integrating different types of resources (games, self-learning resources, family activities, art, etc.). This aims to be built by April 20, 2020. Colombia will roll out a strategy for those families in zones with no connectivity and where the large distances don’t allow other ways of learning.

Colombia has begun broadcasting educational programs on both public radio and television for students from primary to middle school across the country, in coordination with teachers and educational institutions.

Additional information is available from the ICT Ministry.