The Pandemic Reinforces Age-Old Urban Rural Divides in Access to Education in Ethiopia
Photo of school building in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
By REACH affiliates Alebachew Kemisso and Shelby Carvalho. Photos courtesy of authors.
20 April 2020
In Ethiopia, nationwide school closures are impacting the nearly 26 million students across more than 47,000 schools in urban and rural areas in quite different ways. For some, the closure of schools due to Covid-19 brings fear that learning opportunities will close too. For others, school closures mean that children will be home more often to help with chores—a welcome support for some busy parents. In other parts of the country, this round of closures is another of several school disruptions faced this academic year with earlier closures due to violent uprisings.
We spoke to teachers, parents, and students to learn more about how they are feeling about school closures and how they’re spending their time while not in school.
“Trapped at home” in Addis Ababa
For urban students in Addis Ababa, the extended time away from school has spurred some anxiety, boredom, and a sense of being ‘trapped’ in the small physical spaces that make up home. Urban poor and middle class youth described a sense of claustrophobia at having to share small household spaces with many household members and are becoming bored with repeating increasingly monotonous daily routines.
One student complained that they feel “suffocated at home” and that trying to continue learning is very difficult. In some urban middle class families in Addis Ababa, having one or two mobile phones leads to disagreements on schedules for sharing them, particularly when parents may be trying to continue to work and multiple siblings may be trying to continue learning on the same few devices throughout the day. Parents lamented that organizing distance learning for multiple children with limited technological resources was causing “micro-level conflicts at home”.
Life goes on in rural areas
Unlike urban areas, nationwide school closures have not changed daily life in many rural parts of Ethiopia. Students’ experiences in rural areas are quite different from those who feel trapped at home in Addis Ababa. Children in rural areas have more physical space for play. Parents often do not have the time, resources, or skills to support home-based instruction. Some parents in rural areas even expressed relief that schools were closed so that their children would have more time to help with household chores. This is particularly concerning as students who take up such additional work during school closures are at a disproportionate risk of not returning when schools reopen.
Distance learning is reserved for urban students and the 30 percent with electricity
In the wake of national school closures, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has implemented distance learning strategies including online and radio-based instruction. The Ministry of Education has also strongly encouraged parents to engage in home-based learning. However, more than 50 percent of adults in Ethiopia are not literate and many have never been to school themselves. Creating distance learning opportunities that will reach everyone in a country where more than 80 languages are spoken and less than 30 percent of households have electricity, also seems unlikely in the short run.
The screenshots above give an example of the Ministry of Education’s communication of expectations to students and families during school closures.
“Radio is an old-fashioned technology.”
Less than 2 percent of people in Ethiopia have regular access to the Internet, making online learning an unlikely solution
When we asked students and families about the transition to alternate forms of learning, including radio, they told us that owning a radio is considered old-fashioned and is therefore uncommon for households to own. According to those we spoke with, people are not using radios that run using dry cell batteries anymore due to the comparatively high costs and widespread availability of mobile phones for access to news. Television ownership is largely limited to urban areas and to those who can afford electricity and luxuries like a television. Household survey data from 2016 suggest that only about 50 percent of households in urban areas own a television (Ethiopia Central Statistics Agency, 2016). For those we spoke to, learning through mobile phones seemed like the most plausible way to achieve any semblance of distance learning. And still, access to mobile phones, data, and electricity stand as major barriers to using cell-phones for learning purposes on a mass scale.
“We only have five geography textbooks for 150 Grade 12 students, and we have no history books.”
Most students are left without textbooks. Teachers, parents, and students raised concerns about textbook shortages. A teacher told us that for some subjects, his school has a few textbooks that many students are expected to share. For other subjects, they haven’t had textbooks all year. Students complained that they can’t come together to share or exchange textbooks due to fears of spreading the virus. The distance learning gap becomes particularly stark when we compare the experiences of public school students to those in private schools.
Private schools in Addis Ababa are attempting to engage their students in learning through a mobile application called Telegram, which is similar to WhatsApp but more popular in Ethiopia. Through this application, teachers are sending worksheets to students which can be downloaded by parents at home and sent back to teachers. This application can support group text communication among students and teachers. The parents we spoke to who have children in private schools are willing to pay school fees during the period of closure in order to keep the schools and their staff paid and active in these ways. Many of these parents have been provided clear daily schedules for home-based learning and plan to work with their children on their lessons. This experience of learning continuity in the country’s capital stands in stark contrast to the experiences of students, parents, and teachers in urban public and rural schools alike.
A small silver lining for teachers
Several of the teachers we spoke with in rural areas participate in summer teacher education programs through various colleges and universities. They are using the time away from the classroom for professional development, including working on action-based research projects. Some teachers who are in their final year of the Master’s degree program mentioned plans to use the time productively to finalize their thesis projects.
Emphasizing the Importance of Education during Covid-19
Interviewees agreed that school closures would help to protect the health and safety of students. Yet through our conversations, it became clear that information campaigns through all media outlets have focused almost entirely on Covid-19 itself and nearly all other issues related to life during and after the pandemic, including those related to education, have been almost entirely overlooked.
While the urgent focus on health-related messaging is rightly the top priority in the immediate term, these responses can also send the message that there is no serious concern for the education of children during the pandemic or the possible consequences of lost learning in the future. The few messages that have been advertised related to education have come from the national level and do not address local possibilities for continued education.
We asked students, parents, and teachers what might help to send a clearer message to families about the importance of education while schools are closed and support the development of locally-driven solutions. Here’s what they told us:
The GoE should provide recommendations and suggestions for parents to support them as they help their children learn at home. These messages could come in radio, television, and social media messages.
Health information related to Covid-19 is widely advertised in villages and market places. The importance of education and ideas for learning at home could be included with the messages about health.
School principals could accompany health workers on their visits to communities. As trusted individuals, they could convey messages about options to continue learning while schools are closed and symbolize that education is still important and possible. Including local teachers and school leaders in communication and planning for education during school closures could also help support school recovery when schools are able to reopen.
In the face of an uncertain global crisis and the potential for a prolonged time out of school, it makes sense to invest in developing remote learning strategies in Ethiopia. Yet, our interviews suggest that there is a need for more engagement with students, families, and teachers to communicate the importance of learning while schools are closed and to support the development of equitable and effective solutions for emergency learning and eventual recovery moving forward.
The authors wish to thank Sarah Dryden-Peterson and Vidur Chopra for their helpful comments.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of REACH or the Harvard Graduate School of Education.