With most of the European continent – and indeed, much of the world – going into various forms of lockdown in 2020, education proved one of the sectors most significantly affected.
A year into the pandemic, learners and educators have built considerable expertise and experience in digital delivery.
Brighteye Ventures – an early-stage venture capital (VC) fund focused on investing in educational technologies, and a leading authority on Europe’s EdTech sector – decided to dive into the pandemic’s effects on learning.
Led by Managing Partner Alexander Latsis, the Brighteye team looked at why adjusting to digital learning proved difficult and which areas within education systems can benefit from innovation and broader adoption.
Fewer Learning Hours
With little notice, educational institutions, learners and educators were required to shift from onsite interaction to remote learning. The immediacy with which this was to happen caused adjustment difficulties.
For learners to quickly pivot to remote learning, they require four critical elements: a reliable connection to the Internet; a device through which to access content and their teachers; a physical environment that supports learning; and of course, suitable, high quality content.
According to Brighteye’s study, only particularly forward-thinking institutions could quickly adapt to the remote learning requirements. For this group, switching to online delivery was easier than for the significant majority for whom the transition proved a steep learning curve.
The effect of the uneasy transition was felt acutely by students, many of whom experienced fewer learning hours while in lockdown. For instance, 2 in 5 school-age students in the UK learned for 2.5 hours or less a day during the nation’s first lockdown from March to June 2020.
In Germany, 38 percent of students studied for no more than a couple of hours a day, with a survey showing that time spent on school-related activities had dropped from 7.4 hours a day to 3.6 hours.
Overall, the March to June 2020 period where many European nations went into the first lockdown was also where digital learning adoption was lowest. However, many of the issues were addressed as the year continued, especially where partial closures allowed some flexibility in learning provision. Despite these improvements, many students missed a significant amount of ‘normal’, in-classroom learning time in the 2019-2020 academic year.
The Long-Term Impact
As Alex Latsis and the team at Brighteye Ventures notes, the ‘start and stop’ nature of schooling during the pandemic is expected to have a long-term impact on job prospects.
For many governments, the priority is supporting students to catch up and reach the education levels they would usually achieve at their respective education stages. As well-intentioned as this move is, it comes with significant complexities, not least the variations in learning between and within learner groups during lockdowns.
For instance, even where two students had device access and consistent Internet, they may have learned at different rates, unbeknown to their teachers. One student could be far ahead of their classmate, so catching up would look quite different for the two students. It requires a somewhat individualised approach, hence the popularity of tutoring as a means of supporting students to catch up lost learning.
Several studies have sought to assess the impact of lost learning time on future career income. Schwandt and Wachter (2019) suggest that during a recession, entrants to a labour market may experience a persistent wage loss that can last up to a decade, not to mention a skills mismatch that affects the type of work they undertake.
Another study by the OECD predicts that losing a third of a year of learning can result in a loss of income of between 2.5-4% across a working life.
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Alexander Spiro Latsis, Nobrow Ltd. founder, has more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur in media and technology businesses. He has been the Managing Partner of Brighteye Advisors since 2017, working closely with Brighteye’s other Partner, Ben Wirz.
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