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School closures and continuity of learning measures
School closures were common throughout the region in 2020 and 2021, including during the pandemics, epidemics and natural disasters referenced in the questionnaire. School leaders were asked to indicate how long their school was closed due to, respectively, a pandemic, epidemic, natural disaster, or other reason in these years. Durations for school closures were collected separately for each of these categories.
School closures
Sixty per cent of students attended schools in Tonga that were closed for 1–2 weeks due to a pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and a further 14% attended schools that were closed for 3–4 weeks due to a pandemic.
Sixty-three per cent of students attended schools in Tonga that were closed for less than a week due to natural disasters and a further 22% attended schools that were closed for 1–2 weeks due to natural disasters.
Continuity of learning measures
Along with the school closure information, school leaders were asked to indicate what measures were in place to provide continuity of learning during school closures. The measures that were asked about focused on the provision and availability of learning materials and communication with students and parents. Table SLT3.3 shows the percentage of students in Tonga in PILNA 2021 who attended schools with specific continuity of learning measures being implemented, available but not implemented, and not available.
Percentage of students attending schools that had measures to provide continuity of learning during school closure
- Standard errors appear in parentheses.
Seventy-four per cent of students in Tonga attended schools where learning materials were made available for pick-up from schools during closures. A further 14% of students attended schools where this measure was in place but not implemented. Providing learning materials for pick-up was the most common learning measure adopted by schools.
The next most available measure for students was broadcasting learning materials on radio; 67% of students attended schools that implemented this measure and a further 14% had this measure but did not implement it. Similarly, about half of all students in Tonga attended schools that broadcasted learning materials on television (55%).
The lowest proportion of students attended schools that implemented digital learning continuity measures. Only 26% attended schools where learning materials were emailed to them or their parents and only 38% attended schools that made materials available for download from a website or portal.
Half the students (52%) attended schools that communicated with students or parents by email or social media.
What does this mean?
School closures affected large numbers of students across the region during 2020 and 2021. Natural disaster-related school closures affected the greatest proportion of students in Tonga, followed closely by pandemic-related closures.
To provide continuity of learning during these closures, many measures were made available for students in Tonga. Most students had learning materials made available to them for pick-up from their school, broadcast on the radio, or broadcast on television. Digital learning continuity measures, such as sending materials over email or making them available for download from websites or portals were available to fewer students than other measures.
