Education During and After Pandemic: Challenges and Bullying Cases

Indonesia became one of the victims from COVID-19 outbreak, making it a pandemic from 2020 to 2023. Every fields of life and social had experienced a significant decline due the implementation of lockdowns or Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar (PSBB)  which limits the public activity. One of the affected field is Education where PSBB severely limits learning activity, requiring every educational institutions to enforced online learning throughout entire curriculum learning process. This raise a variety of challenges, one of which is to the teachers and education participants who are required to access and familiarize themselves with all online activities through their devices.According to UNESCO's survey, education has had a devastating impact during the pandemic, especially on students. The impacts can be defined as; (1) Significant disruption to the learning process resulting in students not being able to achieve the estimated level of material understanding and mastery, (2) inequality where each student does not have appropriate socio-economic condition among each other, tends to have a major impact no their academic results, (3) Psychological and emotional conditions that  are severely affected along with the prolonged indoor activity that create a sense of isolation from the environment around students, (4) The loss of direct interaction with the teacher makes it difficult for student to apply motivation and progress to learning, (5) The constrains on students in making or receiving feedback on their study and cognitive development, (6) The decline of students' social skills and critical understanding as online activity isolate students. All of the described points are impacts and challenges realized and faced by every educationist and teachers in prolonged online learning. The result affected by these points can be seen on the quality of education, students' academic achievement, and various other contributions as a result of the related learning process.

In mid 2021, schools began to reopen in an attempt to readjust face-to-face learning, a way for education to stabilize the learning process. Some issues are still a challenge for teachers and students as they get used to the inisial year after the isolated online learning and that might be a long-term problem. Especially for students, some problems such as decline in social skills, cognitive abilities, understanding of material, ect. may be tackled depending on methods and the way it applied. Examples of problems include difficulty in communicating, understanding material, or even problems in reading, solving questions, and so on. However, one problem that turns out has increased after the pandemic; bullying.

According to a survey conducted by the "Boys & Girls Clubs of America" organization, 40% of students experienced or were victims of bullying cases at school, this percentage is 19% higher than the last data in 2019. Moreover, bullying has occurred even to elementary school children, there's also 18% of the provided data are victims of cyberbullying and 55% of them choose to remain silent or not report to their parents.

A report from the Federation Union of Indonesian Teachers (FSGI) shows that there have been 16 cases of bullying and43 recorded victims, with 4 cases emerged as the 2023/2024 education years began. The 16 cases came from elementary school (25%), junior high school (25%), senior high school (18.75%), vocational high school (18.75%), lastly- madrasah tsanawiyah and Islamic boarding schools (6.25%). The increase in bullying may be provoked by the social and psychological conditions of some students where their uncontrolled stress and emotions are projected to others, and many victims among them do not dare to report to teachers, parents, or others due to fear, threats from the perpetrator, and so on. Various efforts and solutions have been made to tackle the surge in cases, one of which is the coordination of teachers, parents, school authorities, etc. in monitoring students and resolving bullying cases.

Many years have passed after the pandemic, education has recovered as expected. But the problem still arises in moderate amounts, bullying can still occurs and may be slipped trough our monitoring. Hopefully that the current generation will study well and continue to be able to succeed in the future, create achievements, innovations, and contribute to the rapid development of this era.