Ei-iE

As COVID-19 pandemic continues spreading around the world, educators are being called on to teach, reach and comfort their students and guide frantic parents. Stories shared by my EI colleagues fill me with hope. We are all in this together. We will get through this crisis together.

While acknowledging that teachers had already been offered training to help them develop the skills needed to deliver online classes before the COVID-19 crisis had begun, educators should be better trained in the area according to an education trade union in Cameroon. Authorities should ensure that teachers are well-equipped to...

Members of Senegal’s teaching unions fear the rapid aggravation of the coronavirus crisis in their country and are taking action to ensure teacher and pupil safety, as well as educational continuity.

The measures taken by most governments to try to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have been varied, and in some cases inadequate or too late. But almost everywhere in the world, cessation of face-to-face educational activities at all levels has been the rule.

COVID-19 is a world-wide fear and a tremendous threat in every area of our lives. It affects everyone in the world. The scenes being captured look very familiar to us in a sense. They look like scenes from movies, but sadly this is a real and unprecedented situation in human...

Covid-19 has changed everything. Like it or not, our world is just at the beginning of a historically unprecedented shift to new ways of being, thinking, and doing. The international educational professional will need to respond with its full ingenuity and expertise to this unprecedented challenge.

Although they believe the XGEST platform distance learning initiative launched by the Ministry of Education is worth trying out during the COVID-19 initiative, teachers, through their representative organisation, the Syndicat de l'Éducation Nationale say that they have strong reservations as to whether all students can access it. They therefore insist...

Confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union is doing its utmost to reach out to union members, ensure teachers’ and students’ safety from the virus, and improve access to remote teaching and learning.

In the middle of the turmoil that the pandemic has caused, two perspectives are critical. First, the upheaval has thrown pre-existing inequalities into sharp relief. Second, the crisis is the backdrop to a crash course in moral philosophy: we are all faced with stark choices, as solutions that help some,...

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, education unionists in Poland are calling for increased funding for education and broad access to remote teaching and learning so that education can continue, and the health of educators and their students can be safeguarded.

In response to the Peruvian government's ruling on labour issues, which allows private companies to regulate employment in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, trade unions have launched a campaign to demand the repeal of Emergency Decree 038-2020, which authorises the complete suspension of work, effectively undermining collective bargaining.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Kurdistan Teachers’ Union has been working tirelessly to ensure the safety of school communities, secure financial support for educators and continued education for students.

In Norway, schools and kindergartens have been closed since the middle of March. Only children whose parents have a socio-critical profession have been attending. The Government has decided that early childhood institutions will open April 20th and grade 1 - 4 one week later.

A German education union has voiced its concern at proposals to reopen schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Issues to safeguard educator and student health include addressing how social distancing will operate in classrooms, the wearing of face masks, and infection prevention in facilities and public transport.

The pandemic is stretching the limits of school systems’ abilities to deliver education with the assistance of technology. The struggles of local and national education systems are well documented, and leaders are scrambling to address an overwhelming set of inter-connected challenges to the well-being of students, teachers, staff and administrators...

The International Monetary Fund Executive Board announced yesterday that it has approved immediate debt relief to 25 of the world’s poorest countries to help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Argentina reported its first case of COVID-19 on 3 March 2020; by 19 March, the country declared a complete lockdown when the number of confirmed infections reached 128. In response to the crisis, the government adopted a series of health, social and economic measures to slow down the spread of...

Two education unions in Kenya have called for a complete lockdown of the country to ensure the safety of educators and students. The proposal is just one of those submitted by the unions for the effective and successful management of the health, education, and economic crisis caused by the spread...