Coronavirus, school closures, and challenges with distance learning: the crisis of the right to education

Italy, unlike most countries, has decided to return its students to the classroom at the start of the next school year. This has been a very long absence, during which serious problems have arisen that contribute to the scourge of school dropouts.

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SCHOOL DURING THE CORONAVIRUS

In Italy the schools of every order and degree will remain closed until next September, when the new school year resumes. A decision, adopted to address the coronavirus emergency, which will deprive students of in-class learning for three months, during which they have had to, and will have to, continue to follow distance lessonsSince March 10th (in Lombardy and Emilia Romagna since the end of February), schools have been organised to guarantee the continuity of the programme through online teaching which however has encountered enormous difficulties, putting two fundamental rights in opposition: the right to health and the right to education.

CORONAVIRUS SCHOOL

Staying away from the desks, for example, prevented the school to perform the fundamental task of helping children socialize. This is a particularly important factor, especially for the youngest. Furthermore, alarming phenomena such as school dropout and abandonment they risk finding fertile ground Among the difficulties Italian schools have demonstrated in recent months. Very few institutions, in fact, have managed to guarantee a sufficient number of online lessons, limiting themselves to simply assigning tasks To be completed at home, without teachers having the opportunity to explain the topics to students. And, to make matters worse, not all families were able to obtain the computers or tablets needed for their children to continue their studies.

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SCHOOL REOPENINGS CORONAVIRUS

Even for these difficulties many countries around the world they decided to bring students back to their desks, accepting a reasonable risk. A risk the Italian government has decided not to take, preferring to leave schools as the last sector to reopen. The condition imposed by the Minister of Education, Lucia Azzolina, it was that of the “full security”A guarantee that, evidently, the Ministry was unable to provide before the end of this school year, isolating Italy from most of our European neighbors. With the exception of Spain, almost all other European countries have developed specific protocols to allow students to return to class well before next September.

The Italian government has instead preferred prudence to avoid, as happened for example in France, having to close schools again due to new outbreaks of infection, after having reopened them. The risk, however, is that it is only a scenario postponed which, in the absence of a vaccine, could still happen again next fall with a possible second wave of infections. Of course, there will be more time to develop effective protocols, with smaller classes thanks to alternating classes, and more safety devices, but it will still be practically impossible to guarantee "full safety".

SCHOOL DURING THE CORONAVIRUS

And in the meantime the side effects of distance teaching are starting to make themselves felt. According to data from Community of Sant'Egidio, collected from a sample in the Roman suburbs, 61% of students have not yet taken online classesOf the remaining, 11% did it once a week, 49% twice a week, 28% three times a week, 9% four times a week, and only 2% five times a week. Furthermore, since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, only the 5% of the boys interviewed received a device (PC or tablet) from the school, and only 60% of the sample interviewed received information regarding the possibility of requesting it.

SCHOOL DROPPING OUT CORONAVIRUS

These elements inevitably contribute to the school dropout, a phenomenon that was already very worrying in Italy before the crisis. The rate of unjustified and unauthorized truancy of minors from compulsory schooling in our country is in fact among the worst in Europe with approximately 14,5%, compared to a continental average of 10,6%. Worrying numbers that the crisis will only worsen, making increase social and cultural inequalitiesBecause, as often happens, those who will suffer most from this trend will be the families most in need. Those families where there aren't enough devices for all their children, the babysitting bonus isn't enough, and the schools they attend aren't able to guarantee a quality service.

SCHOOL AND ENVIRONMENT:

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