Investing in Information Technology during the COVID-19 Pandemic (News and Research 198)
Croatia: How investing in information technology and digital competencies of students and teachers payed off during the pandemic | Diego Ambasz, Lucia Brajkovic | When coronavirus (COVID-19) first appeared in Croatia on February 25, the country responded swiftly, introducing measures such as travel and public assembly bans, restriction of working hours of grocery stores, closing of non-essential services, and canceling sporting and cultural events. In order to ensure transparency and provide support to its citizens the Government set up a website koronavirus.hr with detailed instructions on public safety, daily updates on the spread of infection, and the implementation of economic measures. It seems that stringent measures introduced by the Civil Protection Directorate, early detection of spread routes, and extensive media coverage have contributed to successful containment of the pandemic in the country…Media coverage of blog: (and see below)
World Bank—HSE University Webinar Examines the Costs of School Closures During the Covid-19 Pandemic | On May 21, the joint webinar series, Education under COVID-19: Problems, Solutions, Perspectives, Research, began with a session about the effects of school closures under the pandemic. Harry Anthony Patrinos of the World Bank presented the results of a model that he and a team of researchers developed in order to predict the extent to which the closures may reduce learning and lead to future losses in labor productivity and earnings for today’s students. The webinar was moderated by Isak Froumin (Head of the HSE Institute of Education), while Professors Tommaso Agasisti (School of Management, Politecnico di Milano) and Sergey Kosaretsky (Director of the HSE Centre of General and Extracurricular Education) served as discussants…
“Teaching children from all over Uzbekistan is a big responsibility” – impressions of a teacher who taught on television | Due to the pandemic, children around the world are forced to receive education remotely, at a distance. In schools in Uzbekistan, the fourth quarter began and ended online. In order not to deprive students of school education, a broadcast of television lessons was organized in a short time. At the end of the school year, a Kun.uz correspondent talked to one of the authors of these television lessons, Sharofat Toshmirzaeva, who taught native language and literature in high school. Sharofat Toshmirzaeva is a teacher of the mother tongue and literature of the highest category in the state comprehensive school with a philological bias at the Ministry of Public Education and the Presidential School in Tashkent. She shared with us her impressions of the process of selecting and filming teachers for television lessons, as well as of the school year ending online…
Kyrgyzstan: Distance-learning exposes weaknesses of education system | Interest is waning in the state’s distance-education offerings, which have struggled to reach poor, rural students…
Public Education Ministry announces the number of schoolchildren graduating this year (Kun.uz) At a briefing held at the AIMC on May 25, Erkin Murodov, head of the department under the Ministry of Public Education, announced that the 2019-2020 academic year has officially ended. “Today, the 2019-2020 academic year has officially ended in all secondary public schools throughout the country. Due to the quarantine announced in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in our country, the “Last Bell” ceremony was not held.
Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005 Four years after the earthquake, there were no differences in public infrastructure, household or adult outcomes between areas close to and far from the fault line. However, children in their critical first thousand days at the time of the earthquake accumulated large height deficits, with the youngest the most affected. Children aged 3 through 15 at the time of the earthquake did not suffer growth shortfalls, but scored significantly worse on academic tests if they lived close to the fault line. Finally, children whose mothers completed primary education were fully protected against the emergence of a test score gap. We estimate that if these deficits continue to adult life, the affected children could stand to lose 15% of their lifetime earnings. Even when disasters are heavily compensated, human capital accumulation can be critically interrupted, with greater losses for already disadvantaged populations.
Education, economics and public policy 