WARNING: This episode and the below show notes discuss child abuse, sexual assault and suicide.

Listen here:

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study was published in The Medical Journal of Australia. It is the first national survey in the world to examine in detail the experiences of all forms of child maltreatment and the associated health and social consequences.

Maltreatment types that were studied were physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, exposure to domestic violence and neglect. Researchers uncovered that exposure to these types of abuse increased all health risk behaviours. These range from binge drinking, cannabis dependence, smoking, obesity, self-harm and suicide attempts.

The authors state there needs to be more of a focus on multi-type maltreatment, as it is more common for children to be exposed to more than one type of abuse. In order to start making progress, Higgins says we must redefine the health care system as a trauma response service.

Professor Higgins notes in the research that girls are more likely to experience multi-type maltreatment and their associated health consequences. However, he is clear that boys experience all forms of maltreatment and support needs to be in place for all genders.

Horrifically, on top of gender disparities, there are factors that more than double the risk of multi-type maltreatment. This includes socioeconomic factors, divorce, mental illness and/or alcohol or drug dependence in the family.

It is also vital we do not just concentrate on children, but on the parents too. “Parents themselves will come to this task of parenting having likely experienced their own child maltreatment.”

If this podcast has raised some issues for you, or someone you know needs support, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. For children and young people, there is also Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. 

Daryl Higgins is a Professor and director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University. Before joining ACU, Daryl was Deputy Director (Research) at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Sharon Bessell is a Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.

Show notes | The following was mentioned during this episode

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study: National prevalence and associated health outcomes of child abuse and neglect – Medical Journal of Australia (2023)

Bob Hawke’s speech on ending child poverty (1987)

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017)

Global Health: Holding industries accountable – Sharon Friel on Policy Forum Pod (2023)

Women in leadership with Natasha Stott Despoja – Policy Forum Pod (2021)

Preventing violence against women and girls with disabilities – Patty Kinnersly on Policy Forum Pod (2022)

Policy Forum Pod is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Subscribe on Android or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum.

The post Podcast: Uncovering a cycle of child abuse in Australia appeared first on Policy Forum.

In June this year, the QS World University Rankings released its annual list of the world’s best universities. As usual, no Indonesian institutions were in the top 100, nor were there any among the top 50 in Asia.

The low quality of Indonesian higher education institutions, especially in regards to research, has long been a concern for policymakers and those working in the sector. However, positive change in the university sector has been difficult to achieve so far.

To create world-class research universities, Indonesia should focus on developing world-class scholars. There is no instant recipe for this, but policymakers can draw lessons from examples elsewhere in Asia.

Professor Wang Gang Wu, a renowned sinologist and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), once shared his experience of helping to turn the university into one of the world’s best.

When Professor Wang was elected as Vice-Chancellor in the mid-1980s, he realised that to create a world-class research university, there should be a focus on world-class scholarship and publishing in international journals, which are important for global rankings. However, this was easier said than done.

More on this: Indonesia’s G20 presidency and the COVID-19 recovery

He found that the older generations of academics at HKU were not familiar with writing for international publications, even though many were great teachers.

As many who’ve worked in universities know, rapid institutional and cultural change can be extremely difficult to achieve, so he made a long-term investment in a new generation of scholars, most of whom were educated abroad.

As a result of his efforts and those of many others, HKU made major strides, and in 2022 the university ranked number 21 in the world and third in Asia by QS.

Indonesia can learn from this story.

Indeed, in the last several years, Indonesian policymakers have started to recognise the importance of high quality research and publishing in international journals to their universities’ global rankings. In an attempt to promote behavioural change, the government decided to require lecturers to publish in reputable international journals that are indexed in Scopus – a major academic abstract and citation database – in order to become a full professor.

However, unlike in the HKU example, the government failed to grasp that these changes cannot happen overnight. Indonesian scholars face a number of barriers to publishing in international journals, including limited English-language skills, poor institutional knowledge of funding and other processes, and, perhaps more importantly, an academic culture that takes time to change.

More on this: Indonesia’s gender equality report card

As a result of the government’s failure to account for these challenges, the policy has become a major burden for Indonesian scholars and unintentionally created a number of academic integrity issues. In order to publish in international journals, some scholars have allegedly turned to plagiarism or enlisted ‘ghost writers’.

But there is a better way to change things.

Learning from what has been done by Professor Wang and others at HKU, Indonesian policymakers and university leaders should focus on nurturing a new generation of scholars whose research skills can be developed over time.

Currently, however, most Indonesian universities do not provide a good environment for scholars to develop. In order to facilitate this, the culture of Indonesian universities needs to change.

Excessive teaching requirements is one issue that needs attention. Teaching requirements in Indonesian universities often exceed those abroad, particularly in developed countries. For example, many faculty in the United States only teach one or two courses semester, while Indonesia academics often co-teach more than five courses.

In some universities with a limited number of academic staff, scholars are forced to teach subjects that are outside of their area of expertise. This does no favours to students, who deserve a quality education delivered by experts in their field, and robs scholars the opportunity to really think, research, and produce high-quality work.

In many universities in developed countries, selected staff are even able to take a paid ‘research sabbatical’ from teaching for six months to a year in order to produce a major publication. This sort of opportunity is rarely afforded to Indonesian scholars.

In addition to a large amount of teaching, Indonesian academics are also expected to undertake a significant amount of administrative work for their university. This can include sourcing grant money, accreditation administration, and other administrative tasks. These are jobs that would be undertaken – or at least supported – by skilled non-academic staff in many universities in developed countries.

Given the huge amount of non-research work Indonesian scholars are saddled with, it is little wonder that progress on improving the country’s research output has been extremely slow.

What’s clear is that the current system isn’t working. Indonesian scholars often aren’t able to devote the time that’s necessary to produce world-class research and attempts to change this through policy have fallen flat. Change in the sector can be hard, but without it, Indonesia’s dream of having world-class universities will remain an illusion.

The post Can Indonesia realise its dream of world-class universities? appeared first on Policy Forum.

What role do universities play in our contemporary, globalised world? How can universities advance equity and diversity among students and staff? And how can we create a more sustainable and equitable higher education system for the whole university community? Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University Professor Helen Sullivan and Incoming School Director of Crawford School of Public Policy Professor Janine O’Flynn join Professor Sharon Bessell and Dr Arnagretta Hunter to reimagine the future of Australian universities. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3yDiWvA

Helen Sullivan is Dean of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. She has published widely on public policy, and public governance.

Janine O’Flynn is Director of Education, Melbourne School of Government, on secondment at The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). In 2023, she will commence as School Director at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.

Sharon Bessell is Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Show notes | The following were mentioned during this episode:

Feed Wonder, Helen Sullivan (2021).

Policy Forum Pod is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Subscribe on Android or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or join us on the Facebook group.

The post Podcast: Reimagining the future of higher education appeared first on Policy Forum.

What needs to change so that teaching is a respected, valued profession in Australia – on par with medicine and law? How can policymakers better support teachers to do the critical work of educating children? And how can schools encourage play and creativity in the classroom? On this episode of Policy Forum Pod, Professor Sharon Bessell and Dr Arnagretta Hunter are joined by researcher and former ‘career change’ teacher, Dr Alice Garner, and Finnish education expert based at Southern Cross University, Professor Pasi Sahlberg. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3rDalFy

Pasi Sahlberg is Finnish educator, teacher, author, and Professor of Education at Southern Cross University.

Alice Garner is a historian, writer, performer, and a former French and humanities teacher in the Victorian secondary school system. She has published in social, environmental and educational history and is currently based in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

Sharon Bessell is Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.

Show notes | The following were mentioned during this episode:

Your future, our focus: Crawford School of Public Policy graduate pathways

Alice Springs (Mparntwe) education declaration, Council of Australian Governments (2009)

Policy Forum Pod is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Subscribe on Android or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or join us on the Facebook group.

The post Podcast: Transforming teaching and learning appeared first on Policy Forum.

How can policymakers ensure students with challenging behaviours and their teachers are receiving enough care and support in the classroom? What role should alternative play in the education system? And should suspensions and expulsions be used as a way to manage student behaviour, or do these strategies do more harm than good? Deputy Director of the University of Tasmania’s Peter Underwood Centre for Educational Attainment Professor Kitty te Riele and Dr Jennifer Skattebol from the University of New South Wales join Professor Sharon Bessell and Dr Arnagretta Hunter to discuss creating an inclusive, equitable, and supportive education system for all Australian children and young people. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3UOOw2S

Kitty te Riele is Deputy Director (Research) and Professor at the University of Tasmania’s Peter Underwood Centre for Educational Attainment.

Jennifer Skattebol is a Senior Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre at University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her expertise is designing research with children, young people and their families in contexts of disadvantage.

Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.

Sharon Bessell is Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Show notes | The following were mentioned during this episode:

Your future, our focus: Crawford School of Public Policy graduate pathways

Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (2008)

Alice Springs (Mparntwe) education declaration, Council of Australian Governments (2009)

Belonging, Being & Becoming – The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (2009)

‘Uneven impacts of COVID-19 on the attendance rates of secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in Australia’ by Wojtek Tomaszewski et al, Australian Journal of Social Issues (2022)

‘More Than a Metaphor: The Contribution of Exclusionary Discipline to a School-to-Prison Pipeline’ by Russell J Skilba et al, Equity & Excellence in Education (2014)

Australian Association for Flexible and Inclusive Education

‘Attending school every day counts – but kids in out-of-home care are missing out’ by Kitty te Riele et al, The Conversation (2022)

Policy Forum Pod is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Subscribe on Android or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or join us on the Facebook group.

The post Podcast: Providing an inclusive 21st century education appeared first on Policy Forum.

By both its own record and current global comparisons, Australia is doing poorly at learning languages.

Australia ranked second-last among 64 countries in the most recent OECD survey of second language study by 15-year old students. As of 2018, only 36.4 per cent of Australian Year 10 students were studying a second language in school.

These numbers aren’t improving either. In 1982, 16.1 per cent of Australian Year 12 students were studying a second language. By 1992 12.5 per cent did so. Two decades on, in 2012, 10.9 per cent of Year 12 students nationally were studying a second language.

According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), as of 2020, the number of Year 12 students enrolled in languages in Australian schools had declined to 9.5 per cent – or roughly 22,000 of Australia’s 230,000 Year 12 students.

Study of key Asian languages including Japanese, Mandarin, and Indonesian is at its lowest level in at least a decade among Australian Year 12 students with 4.2 per cent of Year 12 students studying one of these three languages as of 2020, down from 5.1 per cent in 2010. The number of students studying Korean and Hindi at Year 12 level remains extremely small too.

Predictably given the decline at upper secondary level, the level of language learning at Australian universities is similarly disheartening.

National student data from the Commonwealth Department of Education indicates that the study of languages by Australian domestic university students was at 20-year low in 2020 with only 2.3 per cent of the nearly 1.1 million domestic students studying a language as part of their degree in 2020. This is down from 3.8 per cent of the national domestic student cohort in 2010.

The decline of Asian language learning by Australian students is particularly dispiriting.

In 2020, just one per cent of Australia’s 1.1 million domestic university students were studying an Asian language – down from 1.75 per cent in 2005.

The decline observed over the past two decades is especially sad given the lofty ambitions and substantial efforts of past Australian governments to increase the study of Asian languages by Australian students.

Between 1995 and 2002, the then Prime Minister Paul Keating initiated the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) strategy that saw $207 million – worth $337 million in today’s dollars – invested in the project.

More on this: Podcast: Language barriers

NALSAS aimed to have 15 per cent of Australian Year 12 students studying a ‘priority Asian language’ – Japanese, Mandarin, Indonesian or Korean – by 2006. This was discontinued by the Howard government in 2002.

The Rudd government partially resuscitated NALSAS in 2009 in the form of the National Asian Languages and Studies in School Program (NALSSP), investing a further $62.5 million – $73.5 million in today’s dollars – between 2009 and 2012. NALSSP was discontinued by the Gillard government in 2012.

Insofar as language learning by school and university students is a measure of Australian curiosity in, and fitness for, engaging with its regional neighbours, the country is in poor and worsening shape.

The reasons for this decline are manifold and complex, but the lack of durable government policy focus bears much responsibility for the failure to shift Australia’s monolingual mindset.

Building Australia’s language capability doesn’t need to, and really shouldn’t, be ideological. This is a discussion, after all, about competence and capability.

The argument for better, more broad-based Asian language literacy among the Australian population is strong. Regardless of who is in power federally, or whether Australia’s external environment is currently benign or more challenging, Australia needs a pool of talented, trained Australians well-versed in the languages and cultures of the region.

Languages deepen understanding of a culture and people with irreplaceable effectiveness. Whether it’s among graduates or staff in Australia’s diplomatic corps, defence department, military, and intelligence agencies, business leaders, or journalists and media professionals, Australia needs experts with language capabilities.

Only with these language skills and the connections they bring can Australia explore new markets, navigate changing global economic conditions, and crucially for government, understand and convey to the public the oscillations of public discourse in China, Indonesia, Japan, India, or Korea with depth and flavour.

More on this: Australia and Asia in business and boardroom

Australia needs to start treating its language capability, particularly its Asian language capability, as a strategic asset, crucial to safeguarding its place as a trusted power in the region – which, among other things, it is.

The commitment to building this capability — by necessity of the timeframe involved — requires bipartisan support. Without it, governments are a destined to repeat a boom-and-bust cycle of public investment that has prevailed for the past 30 years. These policy efforts need to be underpinned by an understanding of national security that is broad enough to encompass both traditional military capabilities on the one hand and linguistic competence and cultural understanding of our region on the other.

Australia should, of course, buy or build the military kit required to defend itself. It is just as important to also invest in a properly funded 30-year national Asian language capability plan.

A revived NALSAS of a similar scope, allowing for inflation and growth in the size of the Australian school population since 2002, would cost the Australian Government something like $71 million per year or $2.1 billion over 30 years.

This would be a modest investment, given it would grant the Australian population the discernment to know when its vital interests are actually in peril, and the ability to differentiate actual threats from imagined ones. It would make Australia capable, as a population, of calibrating its national anxiety appropriately.

The history of Australian foreign policy is littered with misjudgements and overreactions underwritten by mistrust of its regional neighbours.

Sure, policymakers could spend the next 30 years spending more national resources on ever more elaborate alarm systems and insurance policies. Indeed, currently there is bipartisan support for just this course of action.

Or they could spend these resources on getting to know their region better. They could make an act of faith in their neighbours and invest in teaching the population how to communicate with them. In the process, they might just find Australia becomes a more trusted and responsible member of a regional community in which it feels increasingly comfortable and at home.

The post Australia needs to learn to listen in Asia – literally appeared first on Policy Forum.

Last Saturday, Australia elected a new government, emphatically voting out the Liberal-National coalition that had been in power since 2013. In his victory speech, new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese highlighted a number of policy changes, including a commitment to implement the Uluru Statement of the Heart in full and to end the ‘climate wars’. But how should the new government go about pursuing its vision of “no one left behind” and “no one held back”? How can it build trust in the Australian community? And what challenges might it face in pursuing its policy and legislative agenda? On this episode of Policy Forum Pod, Dean of ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Professor Helen Sullivan and Director of the Policy and Governance program at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy Professor Sara Bice join Professor Sharon Bessell and Dr Arnagretta Hunter to discuss the potential policy implications of the federal election result. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Gmwoqp

Sara Bice is Professor and Foundation Director of the Institute for Infrastructure in Society at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, where she also serves as Head, Policy and Governance Program.

Helen Sullivan is Dean of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. She has published widely on public policy, and public governance.

Sharon Bessell is Professor of Public Policy and Director of both the Children’s Policy Centre and the Poverty and Inequality Research Centre at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Arnagretta Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow at ANU College of Health and Medicine, a cardiologist, physician, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU Medical School.

Show notes | The following were mentioned during this episode:

Anthony Albanese’s election night speech, ABC News (2022)

‘Policy File: Australia’s policy future’ by Sara Bice, Policy Forum (2022)

In Focus: Australia’s policy future, Policy Forum (2022)

‘Trust in government key to Australia’s big build’, The Australian National University (2022)

Policy Forum Pod is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Subscribe on Android or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or join us on the Facebook group.

The post Podcast: Australia’s post-election policy priorities appeared first on Policy Forum.

The 2022 Australian federal election comes at a time of persistent uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic creeps along in the background, climate change is ever evident across the continent, a tinderbox of national security concerns lies (thankfully, as yet) unlit in the corner, and a rising cost of living and aged care and labour shortages are demanding national attention.

So, where are voters to turn to make sense of it all?

Is it even possible to wade through the muckraking of everyday politics to reveal the issues and policies that will affect Australians once the grandstanding for votes is over?

Policy Forum’s newest section, In Focus: Australia’s policy future, is here to help.

Experts here at The Australian National University and their peers working in government, industry and the non-profit sector are coming together to provide the Australian public with an accessible, trustworthy resource, including policy recommendations.

Over the coming weeks, these contributors will distil the key considerations in a variety of policy areas for Australian voters. From climate change to the return of Australian citizens caught up in the Syrian conflict, from changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme to infrastructure investment, health care, housing costs, tax policies – you name it.

Then, when the post-election dust clears, we’ll be providing further analysis of how the chosen government should approach these major policy issues, and detailing what the Australian public can expect once a choice has been made.

Before we go deeper into our contributors’ analyses and recommendations, it’s worthwhile considering the implications of a few major issues at play come 21 May.

Much of the result will hinge on the answer to one question: has climate action finally shifted to the ‘centre’?

More on this: LIVE SHOW | Election policy peril

As recently as the 2019 election, taunts of the ‘COALition’ raged and the appearance of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s ‘pet rock’ in parliament remained fresh memories. That year, more than 60 per cent of Australian voters surveyed agreed that ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem’. But the election result did little to reflect these concerns or spur climate action. Similar results occurred in 2016 and 2013, but will 2022 finally be the year Australia votes on climate grounds?

A recent United States National Academy of Sciences article found that the more global warming and climate change related issues are publicly discussed, the more the public accepts the recommendations of climate scientists.

This may seem an obvious conclusion, but it remains quite an important one. A build-up of climate change awareness and a genuine move away from debating whether or not climate change is ‘real’ could signal a shift where climate science shapes policy decision-making. This is critical for making real progress.

For many Australians, recent natural disasters are an unwanted, potent, and devastating affirmation of our climate’s shift, although a consensus gap remains. Greater climate change acceptance in 2022 may result in more climate sensitive voting and, hopefully, climate informed policy-making.

Recent research by ANU Crawford School of Public Policy’s Rebecca Colvin and Frank Jotzo shows that pro-climate action attitudes consistently correlate with votes cast for progressive political parties in the 2019 election, and that voters with pro-climate attitudes are younger on average.

They predict that votes for climate action will eventually comprise the majority. The question then is whether three years has been long enough for that shift to tip the balance in an election.

Two factors complicates this: that climate action is being championed in seats otherwise unwinnable by progressive candidates by a group of ‘teal’ independents, and the idiosyncrasies of Australia’s single-seat preferential voting system.

More on this: Voting in the public interest

The much touted tide of the teal independent candidates, many backed by Climate 200, may play an important role in securing climate action.

The need for climate change adaptation and mitigation, conservation, and fair and just energy transition policies is widely agreed upon.

The challenge though is converting political discussion to policy action. For this to occur, enough candidates with climate as a campaign core will need to achieve election, and they will subsequently need to be able to negotiate with whichever major party forms government.

Public understanding of preferential voting is also worth highlighting. Every federal election cycle, Australian voters can look forward to introductions or refresher courses on preferential voting, like this one from the ABC. These public service announcements are essential in a nation where voting is compulsory and occasionally downright confusing.

Just anecdotally, a politically-minded neighbour of mine has even taken the initiative to create a handwritten poster, concisely explaining preferential voting for passers-by, including debunking ‘the myth that a vote for independents is a wasted vote’.

These refreshers and front fence advocacy reflect the prominence of independent candidates in the 2022 election – as do the early polling successes for independents in seats such as Kooyong and Goldstein – but also the perennial struggle to comprehend the idiosyncrasies of Australia’s preferential voting system.

The interconnection between independents’ capacity for success and voters’ understanding of the preferential voting system should not be underestimated. Votes cast tactically or without complete understanding may be the stumbling block for those candidates who have chosen to go it alone, rather than their platforms or promises.

In a system designed to put parties, not individuals, in power, these independents (and their increasing acceptance by voters) may be a bellwether indicating broader changes in Australian democratic habits.

This raises an even deeper question. Can the two-party domination hold in an increasingly diverse Australian population, especially where party-centric policy choices may not serve public interests?

Only time will tell. But know that as it all unfolds, Policy Forum and our In Focus: Australia’s policy future will be with you all the way, supporting your informed vote with robust and rigorous analysis of the policy choices ahead.

The post Policy File: Australia’s policy future appeared first on Policy Forum.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions in the education sector worldwide. With the closure of educational facilities affecting over 900 million students globally, scholars have sought to understand the pandemic’s impact on learning outcomes.

Researchers from the Centre for Global Development (CGD) conducted a systematic review of 40 empirical studies to identify learning loss and school dropout rates in pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools.

As expected, most studies found negative impacts of school shutdowns on learning loss and dropout rates. Poorer students were more likely to be hit harder with the “pandemic consistently boosting learning inequality.”

While much of the focus has been on pre-primary, primary and secondary school, there is scant evidence available on higher education, and the limited research that is available comes mostly from well-established universities in high-income countries.

Researchers from Arizona State University, one of the largest public universities in the United States, surveyed 1,500 undergraduate students in 2020. It found that a large number of students experienced a decrease in wages and weekly hours worked, and some lost work as a result of the pandemic, which impacted their studies.

More on this: How Myanmar’s coup will impact higher education

A portion of students also delayed graduation, withdrew from classes, and intended to change majors, and the transition from in-person to online teaching also had unexpected negative results. Overall, these studies suggest that the pandemic negatively impacted students’ learning outcomes in high income countries.

However, little is known about how the pandemic impacted students in low and middle income countries.

One 2021 study surveyed 100 undergraduate students at Ramkhamhaeng University, one of the largest public universities in Thailand. During this period, all educational institutions in the country, including Ramkhamhaeng University, had shifted to fully-online class delivery.

Undergraduate students were asked about their current learning outcomes and what they expected those outcomes would have been in the absence of the pandemic. The preliminary results found that the COVID-19 outbreak negatively impacted the students’ expected academic outcomes.

The students expected a 0.17 point decline in their semester grade point average (GPA), and about two-thirds of the students surveyed expected a decline in their GPA due to the pandemic. Moreover, students studied two hours less per week.

Overall, the estimated effects on GPA and weekly study hours in this Thailand study seem to be larger than those seen in high-income countries.

Classified by the World Bank as a upper-middle income country, Thailand may not be representative of developing nations, but the initial results are concerning.

There are several reasons why the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent closure of schools and the shift to online learning may have led to worse outcomes for tertiary students in low and middle income countries.

More on this: Podcast: School’s out – the COVID-19 crisis and school education

First, education sector budgets are lower in these nations than in high-income countries, likely making the transition to online learning more difficult due to limited access to technology and expertise for students and staff. In fact, the World Bank and UNESCO found that two-thirds of low and lower-middle income countries cut their public education budgets since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Second, students in developing countries may experience greater obstacles in a home learning environment, such as poor Internet service, high costs, and limited interaction among students.

Additionally, students in countries severely affected by the pandemic may have been dealing with health challenges of their own, or may have had a family member who became sick or unemployed, without an adequate social security system to provide support.

This is of particular concern for developing countries, given the sheer size of the informal workforce. Without proper social protection and contracts, these workers are vulnerable to losing their jobs and income during the COVID-19 crisis. This loss of income makes it more difficult for students to afford online learning devices.

Therefore, the unprecedented shift to online learning during the pandemic may have translated into worse learning outcomes for tertiary students in developing countries.

While a single case study from Thailand is useful, research on the region is still extremely limited, and more evidence is needed to better understand how the pandemic affects higher education in developing countries.

As the pandemic enters its third year and tertiary students continue to navigate their studies, understanding and measuring the affects of the pandemic on learning outcomes will be essential if developing countries are to avoid falling behind.

The post The fight to not be left behind appeared first on Policy Forum.

Already powered through your bookshelf after a year of on and off lockdown? Or maybe you’ve been glued to the television watching Australia dominate the Ashes? No matter how you’ve spent a well-earned Christmas break, you can kick off 2022 feeling well-informed on all things Asia and the Pacific policy by reading Pat’s picks from 2021.

10. Bhutan’s pursuit of happiness in the pandemic era by Dendup Chophel and Phurba (21 September)

More on this: Bhutan’s pursuit of happiness in the pandemic era

“In a country which has made constitutional and regulatory provisions for the pursuit of happiness through inclusive and sustainable growth, COVID-19 has exposed fundamental structural weaknesses in its biggest growth sectors.”

In August, we launched a new In Focus: Developing Asia section to shine a light on some of the challenges facing the region’s least developed members as the pandemic continued to unfold.

In this article for the section, Dendup Chophel, Research Officer in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University (ANU), and Phurba, a Senior Planning Officer at Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission, examined how COVID-19 has set back inclusive and sustainable development in Bhutan, bringing to light the difficult choices the country faces as the pandemic evolves.

9. Gendering just transition by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (20 October)

More on this: Gendering just transition

“Unplanned mine closure leads to shock, grief, loss of trust, and a sense of helplessness for workers and communities, and women are particularly marginalised and disempowered by the process.”

With world leaders descending on Glasgow in November for the COP26 conference, questions of energy transition have been at the forefront of policymakers’ minds in the past year. However, one aspect of that transition – gender – often flies under the radar.

In October, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Professor at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, wrote this article on what leaders can do to counter the gendered impacts of coal mine closure, unpacking the importance of gendering a just transition as the region moves away from coal-fired energy.

8. Australia needs to do more to support Papua New Guinea by Jennifer Tierney (29 March)

More on this: Australia needs to do more to support Papua New Guinea

“Surely the moral imperative to save lives overrides the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies during a global pandemic.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic has raged across the Asia-Pacific region, protection from the virus has been far from equitable. Wealthy countries still have much greater access to vaccine and healthcare resources, and their less developed neighbours are struggling to cope.

In March, as a third wave began to reverberate around the region, Executive Director at Médecins Sans Frontières Australia Jennifer Tierney argued that Australia should provide its closest neighbour, Papua New Guinea (PNG), and other Pacific countries vaccines for those at high risk, especially front-line workers, even before low-risk Australians got the jab.

7. How Myanmar’s coup will impact higher education by Charlotte Galloway (22 February)

More on this: How Myanmar’s coup will impact higher education

“The most recent coup has placed foreign engagement on hold at a critical juncture. COVID-19 has already slowed the progress of reform, but the coup may cause it to stall entirely.”

On 1 February last year, the democratically elected government in Myanmar was overthrown in a military coup. The coup had, and will continue to have, wide-ranging impacts on international engagement between Myanmar and the rest of the world, and the higher education sector is no exception.

Exploring how the coup would change scholarly relations between Myanmar institutions and their international counterparts, this piece by Director of ANU Myanmar Research Centre Charlotte Galloway explained why the military takeover has put a great deal of momentum in the space at risk.

6. How COVID-19 has changed Australia’s social fabric for the better by Kate Reynolds (30 November)

More on this: How COVID-19 has changed Australia’s social fabric

“Whatever the explanation, nobody can ignore the fact that Australia has come through the COVID-19 crisis socially stronger.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed in Australia, there has been a great deal of worry about growing divisions in society. Vaccine hesitancy and protests in Australia’s capital cities have dominated television screens, but do they tell the whole story?

In this article, Kate Reynolds, Professor of Psychology at ANU, looked to an annual social cohesion survey that suggests that Australia has bucked the global trend and become a more cohesive nation, and unpacked what this means for the future.

5. What governments can do about QAnon believers by James Mortensen (18 August)

More on this: What governments can do about QAnon believers

“As these movements continue to destabilise the security of communities around the world, policymakers, security agencies and community leaders will have to try to come to terms with an impossible task – providing security to those for whom nothing is secure.”

Just six days into 2021, with many Australians still firmly on the couch waiting for the cricket, smartphones around the country lit up with the news that a shirtless ‘shaman’ in a fluffy horned hat appeared to be in control of the United States Capitol. In the investigations that followed the riot, it became clear QAnon, a ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory, had played a large part in the hysteria.

With QAnon followers active in Australia and posing a policy problem, James Mortensen, Lecturer at the National Security College, penned this article about why leaders may have to take action to prevent an event like the Capitol riot happening in Australia, and what that action might actually look like.

4. Historical consciousness is key to good policy-making by Honae Cuffe (8 December)

More on this: Why better historical consciousness is key to good policy-making

“Historical training could teach the public service core skills in historical inquiry, focusing on how to navigate organisational records and public servants’ ability to analyse and weigh the value of sources of evidence.”

With debates about Australia’s national history curriculum filling the airwaves earlier this year, long-standing questions of national identity and how Australian history should be used, learned, and taught made their way back into national conversation in 2021.

In this context, Honae Cuffe, Research Officer at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, weighed in on how the Australian Public Service (APS) could make use of greater historical skill. Her article explained the massive potential for improvement in government decision-making that could be unlocked if the APS were to invest in its historical consciousness, including establishing an Office of the Chief Historian.

3. Australia’s China supply chain ‘vulnerability’ – much ado about nothing? By James Laurenceson (19 May)

More on this: Australia’s China supply chain ‘vulnerability’ – much ado about nothing?

“The frequently touted logic of decoupling Australian supply chains from China to boost resilience is weaker than the common narrative suggests.”

Back in February, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tasked the Productivity Commission to “undertake a study into Australia’s resilience to global supply chain disruptions”, but the government largely ignored the Commission’s analysis.

In this article, James Laurenceson, Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at University of Technology Sydney, explained why. Breaking down Australia’s supply chain relationship with China in light of the report, he argued that concerns over Australia’s reliance on China for material goods may be overstated in national discussion.

2. The side-hustle helping North Korea avoid sanctions by Stephanie Koorey (17 August)

More on this: The side-hustle helping North Korea avoid sanctions

“Cyber activity is now one of the North Korea’s most successful and lucrative, although not only, means of circumventing the UN sanctions regime.”

On 21 June, Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security Tim Watts brought a Private Members Bill to the House of Representatives that called for a strategy to prevent ransomware attacks on Australia. One reason for this was heightened cyber activity from hackers in North Korea – who for some time have been using such attacks to bypass United Nations sanctions.

Explaining these attacks and how the country is using them to chip away at the sanctions, Stephanie Koorey, Visiting Fellow at ANU Centre for European Studies, breaks down what policymakers can do to build resilience and keep the Kim regime from wreaking cyber havoc in the region.

1. Economic ‘opportunaties’ in Papua New Guinea by Michael Kabuni (11 February)

More on this: Economic ‘opportunaties’ in Papua New Guinea

“Above all, Australia’s behaviour shows a disrespect for the right of PNG to guide its own development.”

In November 2020, a Chinese company signed a memorandum of understanding with the PNG Government to set up a $200 million multi-functional fisheries park in its Western Province. In response, the Australian Government simultaneously claimed it was really a plan to overfish the area – ‘vacuum everything up’ – and that such a facility couldn’t really be about the ‘fish’ because that same area is ‘not known for an abundance of fish’.

Responding to this hubbub, Michael Kabuni, a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Papua New Guinea, noted the ways that the park will be greatly beneficial for PNG’s economy and workers, especially women. He argued that Australia’s intervention in infrastructure in PNG in recent years has largely been a reaction to Chinese initiatives.

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