Teachers during corona: high involvement, high workload

Tekst Webredactie - Rob Voorwinden - 14 mei 2020 - 3 Minuten om te lezen

image: Pixabay

Teachers and support staff work very hard to ensure that education continues to progress as well as possible, the Education Inspectorate concludes from discussions with administrators, managers and directors throughout the education sector.

The positive aspects of the crisis, according to the respondents, are usually 'the involvement and commitment of the staff', 'the speed with which distance learning has been set up', 'the cooperation within the school' and 'the flexibility of the staff'.

Workload

A clearly negative point of the crisis is the workload. In all educational sectors, this workload is in the top three of the list of concerns. The further lagging behind of disadvantaged students is another major concern.

In primary education, many pupils do not even reach half the time in education. Sometimes not even a quarter

According to the inspectorate, clear plans must be drawn up to clear up the backlogs. 'Less is learned because of the selection of educational material, less teaching time and fewer incentives from testing and examination. These problems can end up in further education. '

This elimination of the backlog does, however, put extra pressure on the teaching staff. 'In some schools and institutions, teachers and teachers can get the feeling that the problem is being passed on to them. In the next phase of the epidemic, that pressure could increase even more. As a result, it is not self-evident that the partial opening of schools means that backlogs will not increase further.

Loser

Education time appears to be the big loser in the corona crisis across the board, from primary education to MBO. In primary education, according to many respondents, pupils take up less than 50 percent of the teaching time. In fact, 10 to 15 percent of the respondents think that students make less than a quarter of the education time before corona. In secondary education, this number is even higher: 30 to 40 percent of the respondents think that students achieve less than a quarter of their education time.

Professional practice

In secondary vocational education, the availability of professional practice was a major bottleneck for continuing education and examinations. 'Boards, examination committees and teams were looking for the right balance between the diploma requirements on the one hand and the desire to give students the opportunity to complete their training on time as much as possible on the other,' writes the inspectorate. Many schools were looking for a solution in alternative forms of exams, the administration of exams at school and the use of formative data of the students.

Study delay

In higher education there was little insight into the students. Almost half of the respondents could not estimate the percentage of students who still participate in education during the corona crisis. More than half of the respondents do expect students to incur study delay. Many institutions also found it difficult that during this period only limited interaction was possible between students themselves or between teacher and students. 'Social isolation is a major concern,' writes the inspectorate.

This crisis has greatly accelerated educational innovations that were already underway

For the new academic year, many higher education institutions were concerned about their financial position with declining returns, about a possible reduced international intake, about the necessary investments for online didactics and about making double practicals available: for the new group of students plus the current batch of students who are currently unable to take the relevant courses.

Finally, a positive point in higher education is the speed with which distance learning has been set up. 'This crisis has greatly accelerated educational innovations that people were already working on,' the inspectorate says.