Oecd covid survey eag indd

part of their education, with their physical development 
and mental health needs met by co-ordinated services 
liaising with schools. The best way of securing the 
most suitable conditions for learning, assessment, and 
social and emotional growth is through collaboration, 
with jurisdictions and education authorities working 
together with teachers and their organisations, parents, 
communities, and other education stakeholders to 
achieve them. 
It is equally important that the crisis leads to a recovery 
which addresses inequity. Where school capacity 
is limited due to social distancing requirements, it is 
vital to prioritise young children and disadvantaged 
students for in-school learning. The early years are 
foundational for the social, emotional and cognitive 
development of children, and prolonged exposure 
to screens is neither feasible nor desirable at such a 
young age. Similarly, students from lower
socio-economic backgrounds may find it more difficult 
to study from home, suffer from low Internet connectivity 
or lack parental support at home. Often, education, 
health and other social services need greater
co-ordination to support disadvantaged students’ 
learning. Resources should be aligned with needs and 
reflect the social and economic conditions of students 
and schools in a transparent way. Countries should 
make very deliberate efforts and commit resources to 
provide additional targeted student support to address 
the reduced learning opportunities experienced by 
students from some social groups. Targeted support 
can take different forms: the provision of in-school and 
after-school small group tutoring, summer schools, 
counselling for specific students according to their 
social and emotional needs, an enhanced emphasis 
on metacognitive and collaborative learning, on 
oral language interventions, but also on other forms 
of pedagogical interventions that are supported 
by evidence and seem appropriate in the local 
context. Such interventions need to take into account 
that schools are both social hubs that support the 
development of students’ socioemotional skills and well 
being and centres of their local communities.
New interventions and approaches can also be 

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© OECD 2021 
5
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
piloted with the engagement of schools within their 
communities.
Since teachers and schools continue to be at the 
centre of student learning, their working conditions 
and professional learning need to be fit for purpose 
in supporting their work in post-pandemic recovery. 
Clearly, teachers’ job satisfaction, well-being, beliefs 
and professionalism are inter-related and can have 
an effect on student outcomes. Teachers also need 
to be able to support students’ remote learning by 
regular personal communication with students (and 
families, when necessary) and should, in turn, be 
supported to do so effectively. Education systems and 
schools should aim to provide means and schedules of 
communication with students and families, the provision 
of training, opportunities for teachers to network with 
each other, and a variety of teaching and learning 
resources to support remote teaching and enable 
teachers to devote more time to bilateral interactions 
with students, particularly for those in greater need of 
support. 
The pandemic has also shown that education systems 
need to have a strong digital learning infrastructure. 
This infrastructure is best developed and implemented 
in collaboration with the teaching profession. Effective 
and inclusive digital platforms should offer valuable 
resources for in-school and out-of-school learning 
experiences which can, in part at least, address 
the inequity that blights many learners’ experience 
of education and improve learning effectiveness 
for all. Beyond learning management systems and 
platforms of quality educational resources supporting 
teaching and learning in school and at home, this 
infrastructure can benefit from the latest advances of 
digital technology. For example, intelligent tutoring 
systems can support the individualised acquisition 
of procedural knowledge in some subjects; digital 
resources could provide teachers with feedback on 
their teaching and students’ learning and facilitate 
the continued learning engagement of students and 
learning interactions with peers and teachers. Enabling 
technology solutions that can easily work with other 
ones (interoperability), allowing teachers and other 
relevant stakeholders to contribute learning resources 
(crowdsourcing) and involving everyone in the curation 
of those resources (crowdcuration) will also be key 
to a strong digital infrastructure. The evaluation and 
quality assurance of this infrastructure should include 
transparent technology criteria for providers and 
have the feedback of teachers, students and school 
communities at its core.
The pandemic has led to a wealth of school- and 
teacher-led micro-innovations, experimentation and 
the development of new learning infrastructures. 
Education systems can learn from these developments 
so that they become more effective and equitable. 
Across societies, the pandemic has demonstrated 
the importance of frontline capacity and leadership 
of change at every layer of the system. Central to 
education recovery programmes should be a focus 
on supporting a teaching profession that is actively 
engaged in the design of learning environments and 
public policy, in the advancement of professional 
practice, and in creating a stronger professional work 
organisation. Many teachers have also responded 
to the pandemic by creating their own just-in-time 
professional development. A lesson from the pandemic 
is that teachers need to feel empowered to exert 
their professionalism in the use of technology as part 
of their teaching. This also involves the integration of 
technology in all teacher training courses, and more 
collaborative platforms and professional learning 
projects enabling teachers to develop their digital 
pedagogical competences through a peer learning 
process. Many education systems and teacher unions 
have provided virtual professional development for 
teachers during the pandemic reflecting a core activity, 
that of providing effective and highly valued learning.
Last but not least, much can be learnt from the 
innovative and collaborative partnerships between 
governments, the teaching profession at school 
level, and with its organisations and other education 
stakeholders which have emerged during the 
pandemic. The spirit of those partnerships should 
continue and should evolve into an innovation culture 
as a legacy of the crisis, with an open and constructive 
approach to improving educational outcomes and 
equity for all. A culture of innovation will always rely 
on learning at the individual, organisation and system 
levels and involves both bottom-up and top-down 
processes and purposeful collaboration and learning. 
Under an effective leadership, a combination of 
professional autonomy, supporting resources and 
collaboration can help ensure that rules become 
guidelines and good practice, and ultimately, that 
good practice becomes culture. 
It is clear that the pandemic has seriously disrupted 
education systems. But the implications of these 
disruptions are not predetermined. We have agency, 
and it is the nature of our collective and systemic 
responses to these disruptions that will determine how 
we are ultimately affected by them.
Andreas Schleicher
Director for the OECD Directorate of Education and 
Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to
the Secretary-General

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