Education Ministry vs COVID-19: Digital schools in the works
Ministry gears for September 1 goal of fully operational schools
By HAGAY HACOHENAnais, a student at the International Bilingual School (EIB), attends her online lessons in her bedroom in Paris as a lockdown is imposed to slow the rate of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread in France, March 20, 2020.(photo credit: REUTERS/GONZALO FUENTES/FILE PHOTO)
The Education Ministry is working to ensure that schools across the country will open as usual on September 1 and has appointed Prof. Dan Ariely, an expert on behavioral economics, to lead an advisory team to reach that goal. Another team member is Moshe Tor-Paz, who was one of the runners-up for the position of Education Ministry director-general before Amir Adri was picked for the position.Should the nation face an unprecedented outbreak, Tor-Paz and former chairman of the Israeli PTO Paz Cohen are working on creating Israel’s first-ever full-time digital school, The Marker reported on Tuesday.The Z School offers several important changes beyond offering students the chance to study from home during a lockdown. Subjects are taught in one-day units, not broken down to various classes, meaning that the day is spent on one major subject.Virtual classes will serve up to a dozen pupils, and educators will focus on nurturing and helping them grow as much as teaching them skills and information. For example, while 95% of the classes will be available online, students will be obligated to do community work once a week, and their educators will visit them, in their homes, once a year.Tuition fees are expected to be lower than with classroom education, because digital teaching dispenses with buildings and property taxes, and parents will not be obligated to purchase textbooks since the materials will be online. Conducted in virtual space, the school will be open to all young people in the country, regardless of where they reside.Claiming that, in case of emergency, they could expand to teach even 300,000 students, Tor-Paz said that “even if the teachers unions will decide not to open this year, we could,” hinting perhaps at the recent legal victory of the unions over Education Minister Yoav Gallant’s efforts to have them teach during summer break without extra pay.The ministry already operates the Virtual High School, which offers online courses in math, citizenship and physics. But these subjects are meant to be offered to students who attend in-person classes and whose schools don’t have teachers trained to teach that subject.The virtual school – the first of its kind in the country – is meant for the Z generation. Born between the mid-’90s and the early 2000s, Z-generation students tend to be digitally savvy and at home with the Internet and social media.Gallant presented his guidelines to the top committee of his ministry on Wednesday, saying that his plan is intended to “actively prevent infections within the school system” and not to simply respond to outside situations. Gallant added that when the nation faces dire unemployment figures, “every day in which the schools are closed costs the economy NIS 300 million.”Breaking down the possible outbreak scenarios into three basic groups – light, moderate and severe – the minister explained that students will need to attend school at least once a week in each group.
Offering a scaled response, the plan offers those in grades 5-12 more online study options should the coronavirus pandemic worsen.Grades 1-4 are to be divided into small study groups to lower possible infection among students, with plans to have the groups study in their own spaces at all times if the outbreak would worsen. Kindergarten children will be offered extensive protective gear, such as plexiglass walls built into the school to ensure children won’t contact one another, as well as extra educational staff.Some issues need to be resolved, such as who will pay for the high-speed Internet infrastructure needed if schools are to hold so many online classes, and who will provide computers to a fifth of the nation’s children who do not have one at home, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.
