Globally, COVID-19 has caused unexpected, and long-term school closures for almost two years resulting in an increased rate of absenteeism. . Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the education of 37 million children in Bangladesh has been interrupted due to school closures. Children, especially from lower-middle income families are more likely to miss out on school, even after the pandemic.

Under an ongoing project of IDRC and KIX, titled Effectiveness and Scalability of Programs for Children who are Out of School and At Risk of Dropping Out in Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, SAIST Foundation is working with the children who are remaining long-term absent in classes and therefore, at the risk of dropping out. Thus, an alarming percentage of absence data has been collected from schools in research areas , as well as data from participants’ Baseline survey. During the pandemic, educational authorities, school-teachers, and communities along withfamilies tried to respond and cope with the situation to continue children’s studies. But post-pandemic period has brought more challenges and the difficulties. Already there was enough learning gap, moreover, cases of absenteeism reflected a number of problems that were faced by students as well as their families. For instance, migration to villages or other areas caused students to be admitted to new schools in the middle of the year. Sometimes, children are unable to cope with a new place and school and drop the year. Other significant factors for absenteeism include staying at home to look after younger siblings, getting married, having financial issues in the family, etc. Teachers from the Treatment area have reported that, whenever they notice a student to be absent for a long term, first they call his/her guardian. Teachers go for monthly home visits whenever they need to talk to parents to motivate them to send their children to school or to enquire about the reasons for which students are not attending school regularly. However, the question arises - are these steps enough to bring back a student to school? What more can be done to ensure students’ regular attendance? Seems not. There needs to be a constant tracking system, perhaps an SMS alert for the parents who will receive texts from school authorities. . Additionally, to fill the learning gap after school care or extra classes in schools have also become a must for those who are missing out on the studies in class.

SAIST Foundation, in line with teachers, is trying to contribute to this sector, to ensure regular attendance of the students who have a higher percentage of absenteeism in class. Under the IDRC project, two Science and Math Fairs have already been arranged in the schools of the Treatment areas, to motivate children to come to school as well as learn science and math in a fun way. Furthermore, 2/3 teachers from each school in the Treatment areas have been appointed to track down the absentees and contact them personally. For doing these, teachers are being provided with monetary support (mobile bills) and a list of absentees so that the school can provide constant support for the absent students. Additionally, an attendance-based reward system is also being administered by SAIST, in the schools of Treatment areas 1 and 2. Within this system, an attendance card is given to each participant. The student himself/herself will track and mark the number of days on which he/she attended classes for a whole month. After that, the number of attendance will be matched with the teacher’s register book and if he/she succeeds in attending the classes for a whole month, he/she will be rewarded. This monitoring will be done by the class teachers with the help of the learning influencers from SAIST. In addition, the learning influencers will also be helping the subject teachers out, with the class lectures in Science and Math, to make video content and upload those in the school’s personal YouTube channel. Undoubtedly, this will help a student not to miss out on a lecture, even when he/she is absent in class.

Nevertheless, this global epidemic has resulted in massive educational losses despite all efforts. So, the school authorities, as well as the government must think about a consistent system of tracking out each student and providing them with the necessary care to fulfill this loss.