Collateral damage in education: implications for the time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) has impacted the world immensely in terms of both global health and economy. It has exacerbated the gap between the economically advantaged and disadvantaged groups in terms of access to various resources and opportunities across the world. This situation has been described as ‘collateral damage’, which represents unexpected and unintended negative impacts that deprive the poor of certain opportunities and rights. Interestingly, the differences in capability to respond to the issues caused by COVID-19 are observed in developed and developing countries alike. This paper aims to discuss the potential risk factors that encourage students to drop out as collateral damage due to COVID-19, based on the literature on developing South East Asian countries. This commentary argues that collateral damage caused by COVID-19 has revealed a serious limitation in the nature of formal schooling in South East Asia. Although more socio-economically vulnerable groups can participate in formal schooling, there is still not a sufficiently communal climate in these schools that would prevent them from dropping out.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• collateral damage
• educational inequality
• dropout
• South East Asia
• school as community

Acknowledgement

I would like to extend my sincerest thanks for the editors and anonymous reviewers for their insightful and detailed comments to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Conventionally, the abbreviation ESL is used to represent early school leaving, but can also, occasionally, stand for early school leaver(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Globalisation, Leadership and Policy Academic Community, Faculty of Education, Monash University [grant number AC Research Grant 2020; Academic Capacity Building Grants 2021].