Equality and Equity in Education

The pandemic highlighted inequalities, especially in resources. This so-called digital divide was seen within societies and across countries and has been associated with cultural practices. When traditional ways of teaching in classrooms was stopped during the pandemic, many took to online education instead. However, there was lots of resistance from societies that had no infrastructure in place and determined that any form of distance learning was inferior, resulting in some young people losing up to two years of education. We are unsure how this is going to play out eventually as these individuals are going to need to catch up at some stage.

Education cannot be separated from society, and we need to understand cultural contexts. One aspect that we come across is copying, or what we term as plagiarism. The Western world tends to focus on individual attainment, yet other cultures believe in sharing knowledge as that is accepted as helping each other. Although we cannot condone any kind of copying direct from others, we can encourage more sharing of knowledge through the forums on Moodle. Students who are then able to put that knowledge into their own words also demonstrate their understanding of that new knowledge.

We know about equality of opportunity and MKLC Training is very good at that with online access and checking individuals are on the right course. Equity is having equal outcomes and we try our best with this by enabling courses to be extended and encouraging individuals to complete by offering extra support.