Lessons for Education from COVID-19
A Policy Maker’s Handbook for More Resilient Systems
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken long-accepted beliefs about education, showing that
learning can occur anywhere, at any time, and that education systems are not too heavy
to move. When surveyed in May 2020, only around one-fifth of OECD education systems
aimed to reinstate the status quo. Policy makers must therefore maintain the momentum
of collective emergency action to drive education into a new and better normal. This
Handbook provides practical guidance to support them to do just that. It presents
the current state-of-play in over 40 education systems, and efforts to improve pedagogical
practices in the midst of the pandemic. It proposes three key lessons and related
policy pointers for the current academic term and beyond. Drawing on concrete examples
of COVID-19 policy responses from primary to tertiary, as well as impactful pre-crisis
policies, it addresses the policy areas of flexible learning, educator skills, and
student equity. The Handbook has been prepared with evidence from the Education Policy
Outlook series – the OECD’s analytical observatory of education policy. As such, it
benefits from a decade of policy analysis, outcomes from the Education Policy Reform
Dialogues 2020, and the development of an actionable Framework for Responsiveness
and Resilience in education.
Published on December 15, 2020