Canada’s schools are in the midst of welcoming students back to the classroom. The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is introducing a new tool in the context of this transition: a Back To School storymap that explores the policies and practices for school re-openings and how back-to-school plans in Canada stack up against those of our counterparts in the Asia Pacific.
Take a video tour of our Back to School Storymap
Specifically, this new map-set in our ongoing project presents an at-a-glance look at three aspects of school re-openings:
- Where and how children are learning (e.g. online, in-person, or some mixture of the two).
- Whether Asian jurisdictions are making use of innovative procedures such as staggering in-person attendance or grouping students into cohorts or ‘bubbles.’
- How policies differ with respect to wearing masks in and around school.
While the data and precedents are only now emerging, many Asia Pacific school systems have a head start on Canada, having re-opened their schools weeks or even months ago. APF Canada’s interactive, geo-enabled overview of 15 education jurisdictions (four of them broken down to the state or province level) provides a glimpse of what we might expect here in Canada as parents, teachers, school staff, and, of course, students adjust to back-to-school life in the ‘new normal.’
