As your partners in supporting your families’ global education needs, we at ED-SG want to offer some updates and insights from a schooling perspective regarding this rapidly-evolving situation regarding COVID-19.

As international schools serve as natural platforms for the close and sustained interaction of diverse populations, they and their students are among the most directly affected by pre-emptive public health initiatives intended to contain the contagion.

While the impact and reaction to the situation varies widely from place to place and even school to school, some recent developments include:

• Many international and local schools in Asia are now indefinitely closed and have been since the Chinese New Year holidays; Japan has closed all state schools through the end of March. Singapore schools have remained open but measures have been taken to limit exposure.

• Many closed schools are improvising using web-based instruction. Hurdles include lack of consistent IT platforms, inadequate bandwidth, and lack of experience with online education delivery.

• Due to extensive student travel to affected areas during the recent holiday break, multiple state (public) schools in the UK have closed, and others are asking students who participated in ski holidays to the Italian Alps to “self-isolate” at home.

• The Hong Kong Education Ministry has given permission for crucial face-to-face tutorials and exams to proceed at some IB schools, but otherwise required students to stay home.

In Singapore, schools are checking student temperatures on a daily basis and severely limiting school trips, group activities, and outside visitors (including families arriving for admissions tours and interviews).

The French and British Chambers of Commerce in Hong Kong have recently warned that some international schools may not recover from the financial impact of the student exodus following on the disruptions caused by last year’s protests.