ISSN 1842-4562
Member of DOAJ

Romania's rural children most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic


Ionela-Roxana GLÄ‚VAN


Keywords

COVID-19, challenges, inequality, distanced-learning, achievement gaps

Abstract

The school lock-downs and the shift to online education, may deny children from disadvantage communities or remote locations the opportunity to have an equal change in education and may widen the gaps in terms of learning achievements, obtained competences and curve the future trajectory of the labour market access. The study focuses on the education access for the primary and secondary school children in Romania and investigates impact and inequalities exploiting new data sources collected during the pandemic. The data analysis sugests that the effect of COVID-19 pandemic will be felt intensively by children for time to come. Lack of infrasstructure and apropriate digital tools to facilitate online schooling exposed serious risks in creating an unequal enviroment which on the long term might never be recovered by most of the affected children. Having in mind that digitalisation is a necesity for a developed and modern economy, there is still room for improvements as the Romanian educational system should also be integrated with the appropriate infrastructure, tools and services necessary for no child to be left behind in the forthcoming 4th digital revolution.



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