This brief provides an overview of the measures taken by the Belarusian state authorities in the education sector in response to the pandemic. It concludes that despite repeated declarations concerning the usefulness of remote learning over the past decade, little has been done in practice.
Belarusian educational institutions fell victim to inadequate state policies against Covid-19, including of the tendency to downplay the risks associated with the virus, Andrei Tarasevich argues in his brief. Some elements of remote learning were introduced in secondary and higher education institutions on the initiative of their administrations or individual teachers and lecturers.
However, these isolated efforts were only partially successful due to the absence of both legislation and the necessary infrastructure, as well as countervailing state policies. The absence of widely-implemented remote learning in the Belarusian education system must have greatly contributed to the rapid proliferation of Covid-19 infections in Belarus, particularly in autumn 2021.
Read brief research paper “Belarus’s response to Covid-19 in the education sector”
