Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has practically cancelled all activities that require physical interaction, all in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. 

The schools in all levels had to migrate from the physical classroom platform to be online and teachers were struggled to find the way to teach and provide their students with academic virtual mobility in lieu of the traditional method.

With lockdowns, enhanced quarantine measures, and school closures, everyone is affected.  Concerns are mounting up on school closures’ unintended effects on learning.  Questions such as access to, quality, and effectiveness of non-traditional modes such as distance education, alternative learning modalities, flexible learning options, homeschooling, and blended learning emerged.  Doubts on how assessments can be done and the acquisition of necessary competencies of learners and the readiness of teachers to transition to online learning and parents to home-based learning, proved to be challenging in the COVID-19 world.

SEAMEO Academic Mobility Programmes were affected as the highlight of the programme includes exchange of students of partner universities in Southeast Asia.  SEAMEO’s Academic Mobility Programme, SEA TVET programme and SEA-Teacher programme which addresses two of the SEAMEO Council of Ministers approved Priority Area Number 04: Promoting Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Priority Area Number 05: Revitalising Teacher Education, were also canceled since March 2020 due to the pandemic. 

The SEA-TVET Exchange Programme is a part of the umbrella SEA-TVET programme, which includes High Officials Meeting on SEA-TVET, SEAMEO Polytechnic Network Meeting, SEA-TVET Student Exchange programme and SEA-TVET Teacher Exchange programme to promote internationalization of TVET schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities in Southeast Asia through cross-country collaborations and academic mobility programmes. 

The SEA-TVET Student Exchange programme has started since 2018.  The field and degrees in focus for the exchange are Diploma, Higher Diploma and Bachelor in Engineering, IT, Agriculture, Business, Multimedia, Health Science.  The students would be doing the exchange for one month through internship.  The total number of exchanged students in 2018-2019 is 1,143 students.  While, teacher exchange programme was scheduled to take place for 14-21 days during March-August 2020 and was postponed due to the pandemic.           

The SEA-Teacher Academic Mobility Programme provides opportunity for pre-service student teachers among universities in Southeast Asia to do their practicum (teaching experiences) for one-month in schools in other countries in Southeast Asia.  It started in 2015 with 11 universities.  In 2017, the number of HEI partners increased and to date, 2,295 pre- service student teachers benefited from the programme. 

The postponement of the virtual mobility programme was consistent with the feedback that SEAMEO Secretariat received from the SEA Academic Mobility survey in 2020 among the participating universities to determine their readiness and future plans regards the internship programme.  All of them cited the following considerations: increasing COVID-19 cases, countries and schools in lockdown, postponement of academic mobility programmes to 2021 or until a cure or vaccine is available, and the possibility of having a virtual programme.  COVID-19 has changed the educational landscape globally.

Therefore, SEAMEO Secretariat would like to prepare for the new normal of academic mobility with SEAMEO Partner Schools, Colleges and Universities in the Virtual Summit 2021 catering to the needs of all educational institutions within SEAMEO School Networks on academic virtual mobility and regional approach of academic mobility.