Education During a Pandemic: Distance Education

Zdenko Kodelja

Summary:  One of the consequences of the new coronavirus pandemic was the closure of schools and, where possible, the provision of distance education. Due to the closure of schools, the inequality of access to education in Slovenia and worldwide has greatly increased, and the associated equity in education has decreased, because school closure is most harmful to vulnerable and socially deprived students. It is difficult to say how successful distance education has been in the Slovenian context - if we compare it with the effects of ordinary education in schools - as there is no objective and credible data on this. There is no doubt, however, that it has been truncated and at a lower level than education in schools. However, it seems that all the possibilities offered by modern information and communication technology have not been used in distance education so far due to objective and subjective circumstances. Therefore, distance education cannot be judged solely on the basis of how it took place in the spring.