Education providers are being forced to innovate: One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it has provided educators with the opportunity to think outside of the box and finally implement long-shelved innovations. Augmenting traditional models of classroom learning with interactive apps, face-to-face video instruction, live TV broadcasts, or others online by ‘educational influencers,’ could become the new norm. Depending on cost and culture, learning centers will gravitate toward the mix of modalities that works best for them. It could be an exciting time for students as they develop skills they never expect to, such as filming, editing and submitting a workout video to demonstrate they’ve completed a physical education assignment.

Public-private partnerships: To provide students with quality education during this year’s peak self-isolation months, diverse stakeholders, including education professionals, technology providers, telecom companies, publishers and governments joined forces in an unexpected coalition. Those channels of communication and collaboration have been irreversibly hacked open, with room for growth and improvement. One great local example was ISPs providing students with beefed-up data packages when schools began shutting down, to ensure that pupils were able to reliably download their assignments.

Digital growth … and divide: One unfortunate downside of digitally-led growth in education, however, is a potential exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities. Digital growth doesn’t come cheap. Students who could barely afford learning tools to begin with, or lack the tech savvy to readily operate them, face the unfortunate prospect of being left behind, which is a true cause for concern in a field meant to be informed by egalitarianism.

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