COVID-19

In education management, assessment helps to determine the effectiveness of teaching and the various needs of an education system. However, the COVID-19 restrictions, and school closures that followed, complicated the use of traditional in-person or in-class learning assessment approaches.

Interventions that are likely to be impactful are those that are anchored on sound policies and strategies, are well-planned and resourced, are efficiently executed, and are effectively monitored and evaluated. This presupposes a ‘normal environment’ yet these conditions are hardly met fully during ‘normal times’ when it comes to Africa. And so, we find instances of glaring gaps between policy pronouncements and practice responses, with resources neither adequate nor targeted appropriately to fully implement programmes.

The ADEA Inter-Country Node on Technical and Vocational Skills Development (ICQN-TVSD) initiated consultations with its country focal points between June 2020 and June 2021 to monitor and evaluate the responses of the ICQN’s member countries to the global health crisis related to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in December 2019.

The COVID-19 challenge is unparalleled, triggering major changes among economic and educational sectors, including the Higher education sector. The bases of this unique ecosystem have been impacted significantly, creating the most severe disruption in the world’s higher education systems in history.