Even if the Internet penetration rate and the availability of digital equipment at home are shown to be relatively high, the families with a low socioeconomic level experience an alarming level of digital exclusion, of up to 30%. Moreover, learning based on the use of smartphones is inefficient and even harmful to the students’ health. In many countries, the use of smartphones for educational purposes is banned. These are some of the findings of the sociological survey “Quality of Education during Health Crisis” that was presented by the Institute for Public Policy (IPP).
The study shows that 94% of the respondents have access to the Internet, about 50% have a personal computer or a table PC, while 85% have a smartphone.
“When we tried to analyze the extent to which this equipment is available to different categories of population – families that communicate in Romanian or in Russian, from villages or towns – we saw that there are no significant differences. The children from towns and the children from villages have similar access to ICT devices. However, by the socioeconomic level of the family – low, average and high – that is calculated based on additional data, based on the things owned by the family, we detected digital exclusion. Many children from a particular category do not have access to ICT equipment and were thus excluded from education during the quarantine periods that were many in number last year,” IPP programs director Anatol Gremalschi stated in a news conference at IPN.
According to the study, despite the multiple difficulties faced, most of the parents have good and very good opinions about the actions aimed at maintaining the quality of education during the pandemic. Most of the positive opinions referred to the actions taken by teachers and education institutions (about 80%) and, already traditionally, fewer opinions (about 55%) to the central authorities.
The research authors said the parents consider the education institutions didn’t inform them enough how they can help their children during online learning (50%), didn’t inquire what difficulties they face in this process (55%), weren’t asked how the education process should be organized during the health crisis (61%), weren’t taught how to ensure the protection of personal data and child safety online (65%). At the same time, the parents admit that they weren’t very active in these areas either. About 52% of them said they never tried to influence somehow the decisions taken by the administration of schools.
The sociological survey covered a sample of 400 parents who were interviewed over the phone, given the pandemic, during January 16-28.
The study was conducted in the framework of the project “Taking opportunities for effective involvement of parents, communities and civil society in education governance (2019-2021)” that is implemented by the IPP under the Good Governance Department of Soros Foundation Moldova, with financial support from the Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations.
