The pandemic of COVID-19 has caused a serious effect on health, economic, social, political, demographic, and all other various aspects of the economy. It has given a huge impact on the education system in a worldwide manner that leads to the closure of universities, colleges, and schools. This study aims to assess the impact of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic on the education sector in special reference to India. The loss of learning was majorly pronounced among students from a disadvantaged prospectus. The authors conducted a qualitative document analysis of all the published articles that explained the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the education system from 2019-2021. The study provides an insight on the barriers in education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The result shows the evolution of technology-enabled education in the learning sector. Finally, the challenges articulated by the learners during online learning include external as well as internal factors and causes.
TopIntroduction
COVID-19 came along with many unprecedented challenges (Agrawal, Jamwal, et al., 2020). One of them was that regular classroom teaching had to be abandoned immediately because social distancing norms had to be followed strictly. In the effort to provide continued education, institutions and governments realized the need to support online learning (Soledad Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2021). As a result, virtual classroom learning had to be adopted worldwide whether a nation is developed or still on the development trajectory. Some countries were fast to embrace this change, while others had to struggle (González-Zamar et al., 2020). One particular example was that of India, where Internet penetration and availability of smartphones remain a bottleneck. India happens to be one of the few nations which are continuously making significant advancements in terms of developing the technology for the spread of quality universal education. The availability of literature concerning the role of learning is mainly about classroom-based learning (McCluskey et al., 2021; Ali et al., 2022; Celia et al., 2021). Hence there is a need to look at education after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Until now, the available literature examined the impact of summer vacations on learning, or disruptions from various events such as extreme weather conditions, loss of natural calamities, or strikes by teachers (Hayran & Anik, 2021). COVID-19 accumulates unique and unanticipated challenge that makes it vague how to apply earlier lessons. Simultaneous effects on the entire economy make parents limited equipped to provide resources and support. They struggle with poor economic conditions, uncertainty, loss of jobs, salary reduction from their working places, and working from home. It gives birth to the risk of health and mortality aspects of the pandemic to incur further psychological costs along with the impost of social isolation (Schelhorn et al., 2021; Wilson et al., 2021; Giardino et al., 2020; Schröpfer et al., 2021; Haesebaert et al., 2020). Family and domestic violence cases have also projected to rise, putting vulnerable students at more risk (Foley et al., 2021; Ragavan et al., 2020; Every-Palmer et al., 2020; Duby et al., 2022). At a similar time, the scope of a pandemic may drive educational institutes and governments to counter more intently than during other disruptive circumstances.
By that time, studies on the loss of learning on the part of learners during the lockdown period have started to emerge. In the education sector, teachers and students have struggled the most in adopting the new teaching-learning style, online-based solutions for instructions (Marcén-Román et al., 2021). Adopting an online-learning platform is the most challenging as educators and learners were not trained to follow up on this earlier. The channelizing of face-to-face learning is one of the most traditional ways of teaching (Bulut et al., 2021).