How it’s Looking
In Asia, countries like China, Singapore and Korea are among the top educational systems in the world. This is to say that what some countries have been dreaming of accomplishing with their national education, these three Asian countries have already excelled at it.
Looking at South Korea, the proof of their excellence is evident in their achieving a 97.97% literacy rate as a nation since 2008.
China was one of the first to move its educational beliefs towards a more student-focussed framework. In addition, for 2020, they have undergone another educational transformation to advance education in their country.
Singapore has also made noticeable improvements in its educational system. This is seen when they extended their focus to include fundamental and 21st-century skills. In addition, their framework acknowledges the necessary abilities such as physical education, arts, and music as being of equal importance to traditional theoretical skills as they seek to empower their students’ imaginative and expressive capabilities.
In recent years, India joined the race when they introduced an innovative National Education Policy in 2020 aimed at improving higher education in their country.
In contrast to the northern region of Asia, South Asia seems to be finding it hard to establish a reliable educational framework. South Asia has faced challenges over the years include a lack of qualified teachers, good learning materials and facilities, and relevant curricula. Moreover, they have also had to face the effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic, and social distancing as most of these countries were unable to shift to online distance learning.
How can We Improve Learning?
The first solution would be to address the already-mentioned challenges. We would have to start by improving teacher training and education by providing teachers with opportunities to complete training modules, online learning modules, and in-class mentoring.
Secondly, we will need to develop a relevant curriculum to develop 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and communication. In addition, we should seek to decrease the gap between the curriculum content and the content students are learning.
Furthermore, we should enhance collaboration with stakeholders as a collective. These include (but aren’t limited to) teachers, parents, the schooling authority, and local government to improve the countries instruction and performance.
Lastly, keep the number of natural disasters in the area in mind when developing solid infrastructure. So, educational infrastructure should be aimed at being disaster-prepared. Furthermore, by focusing on improving the school environment, it will be possible to enhance students’ school experience and also attract parents to send their children to school.
Strengthening Learning
- Shift focus to learning – making learning the priority to achieve worthy learning outcomes, increase future income rate and overall economic growth.
- Improving pedagogy and learning work models – by building on the countries existing areas of excellence, a realistic working model of what a learning-centered pedagogy looks like can be built.
- Reintroducing assessment – to move away from traditional memorization of content to rather test students’ understanding and skills of the same content.
- Strengthen accountability for learning – getting parents involved and informed about what learning objectives need to be achieved and why.