Human resource strategies in a post-COVID era: education industry

Abstract

COVID 19, the pandemic of this century, began as a small viral outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Soon, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2, the causative agent of the disease, spread across the continents, forcing the WHO to declare the disease as pandemic on 11th March 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020). According to WHO, there are approximately 218 million reported cases worldwide, and the pandemic has claimed the lives of around 4 million people as of September 3rd, 2021. One of the worst affected sectors by the pandemic is the education sector, in particular the school education. The COVID 19 pandemic has been credited to bring the largest disruption to the education sector ever in human history, affecting ~1.6 bn learners across 200+ countries. The schools and other learning institutions by enlarge have been shut since early 2020, impacting 94% of the global student population. (Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021) The restrictive movement policies of social distancing adopted by various nations as a precautionary measure to the pandemic have curtailed the traditional mode of education significantly. In response to the pandemic, the education community adopted the advancements in technology to their benefit: virtual mode of learning (e-classrooms). Though the sector was quick to transition to the online mode of learning, the very sudden transition brought about its problems. With the vaccination drives gaining traction, the hopes of the end of pandemic and reopening of schools are high. But there is still uncertainty in the reopening/ functioning of schools in the new normal post relaxations.