Building Resilient School Systems

 Introduction

As part of the non-pharmaceutical interventions employed against the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, school closures, with a transition to distance learning, was one of the most common containment strategies.  Preparing the school system for a future crisis requires the ability to examine the effectiveness of schools' functioning during distant learning and their level of preparedness for future crises. Functional resilience is defined as the ability to maintain vital operational continuity in the face of disturbance. The objectives of the study included to develop a functional resilience index of schools in Israel; To evaluate and validate the functional resilience index; To map the factors that are related to the functional resilience; To compare the level of functional resilience in different types of schools; and to identify which characteristics/variables of schools will successfully predict functional resilience.

 Overview of methods

To enable the examination of the study objectives, the study design included the development of the tools based on an extensive literature review, followed by a validation process.  Concurrently, a modified eDelphi process for building an inclusive index of the functional resilience of schools, based on the various components of resilience was conducted.  The final study tool consists of four tailored questionnaires to examine perceptions and attitudes of key stakeholders, i.e.- teachers, principals, parents, and high school students regarding communication, psychosocial aspects, perceived stress levels, infrastructure, resources, pedagogic support, digital literacy, and perceived functional resilience, as well as distance versus frontal learning. In addition, to enable a brief ongoing assessment of functional resilience, the correlation between perceived functional resilience and functional resilience (minus the perceived functional resilience scale) was examined. Using an internet panel, the tool was disseminated cross-sectionally among the four groups of stakeholders from a variety of schools in Israel, including the state and state religious streams, from all regions of Israel.

 Results

The results showed that there were no significant differences in the composite functional resilience score based on various characteristics such as the type of school (religious or state), size of the school, and geographic location of the school district. However, the findings revealed interesting variations among stakeholders, with the findings suggesting greater vulnerability among specific stakeholders. Furthermore, the perceived functional resilience index was examined as a proxy for the composite functional resilience index, with a high correlation between the two found. The most common predictors of perceived functional resilience among the majority of the stakeholders were digital literacy, pedagogic support, perceived stress, as well as communication during distance and frontal learning.

 Conclusions

In order to increase resilience and preparedness for future adversities that school systems may face beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, it is recommended to periodically incorporate an assessment based on a structured tool. This evaluation process can provide insights into the ability of the school system to adapt to future adversities and identify vulnerabilities, particularly among specific stakeholders. Tailored interventions can then be designed to meet the specific needs of each school. Future work should expand the study to include other types of schools with varying characteristics, such as Jewish versus Arab schools in the Israeli context, private versus public schools, etc. Furthermore, it would be beneficial that this tool be implemented across schools in various regions globally to understand whether generalizability and transferability exist and whether it can be applied cross-nationally beyond Israel.