The Education Preparedness Index in Covid-19 (EPIC) is one of the outputs of the project Enabling Learning to Happen for All Children in Emergency Crisis. The project is funded by the Global Campus of Human Rights in partnership with the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. In 2019, people all over the world were faced with new realities and adopted new rules of life. One of those realities also affected the education system. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries in the world initiated emergency remote education applications and platforms to continue providing education without interruption, aiming for students to continue their learning. Under the crisis of COVID-19 remote/distance learning became a viable alternative to ensure the continuity of the educational process. Under these circumstances, the research aimed at studying the preparedness of the education system to adapt to new realities and to act in crisis conditions. To this end, a group of Armenian experts took the initiative to develop a model for assessing the education system in emergencies - Education Preparedness Index in COVID-19 (EPIC). EPIC assessment of preparedness for education in emergencies is a set of indicators, tools, and methods aimed at measuring education system readiness for emergencies and analyzing the effectiveness of education policy responses in times of crisis. The four main thematic areas that the framework covers are as follows:

• Policy and Legal Framework

• Coordination and Cooperation

• E-readiness

• Capacities and Resources

Each thematic area incorporates a set of indicators and sub-indicators that allow uncovering the level of achievements and the efficiency level of preparedness within each recommended section.

EPIC is applicable in all emergencies entailing physical distancing and education through online means. The emergency context was retrieved from the conditions and limitations appeared through COVID-19 period combined with other crises such as war, internal unrest, context of disability and some other characteristics. The framework is flexible to changes of individual country cases and these are specific characteristics are considered during the assessment.  

The research question of this study is as follows:

What is the level of preparedness of the country/countries in provision of education in emergency entailing rapid shift from conventional education to distant/ online education?

EPIC basis on the international principles of child rights. Among them the framework of 4As, Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Adaptability of Education of the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner is the corner stone of the study. The methodology is based on the UN CRC Commentary N13 description and statements of the 4As framework. Furthermore, the EPIC grounds its target group that primarily on children of 6-14 age group following the CRC General Comments N13, World Declaration on Education for All, as well as on SDGs, the Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, the Global Study of Children Deprived of Liberty (Nowak, 2019), Chronic Crises and Early Reconstruction (2004). the Dakar Education for All (EFA) framework, and the Sphere Project’s Humanitarian Charter.

To achieve the research goals, the triangulation strategy was employed. The purpose of the triangulation approach is to use diverse methods to assist each other in explaining and interpreting the data. Thus, the calculation and analysis of the index are based on three data sources: 1. Quantitative survey of teachers and students; 2. Expert interview; 3. Statistical data. 1. The quantitative research includes conducting a representative quantitative survey among students and teachers of secondary schools to assess and calculate the e-Readiness sub-index. The survey covers the following three thematic areas, indicating the readiness of schools for distance education: • Technological readiness for distance learning • Social-psychological readiness for e-learning • Cognitive readiness for online education Each of the above-mentioned areas has its sub-indicators and a series of relevant questions for teachers and students. We adopted an online standardized questionnaire hosted on Google, the link to which is provided to school administrators who further ensured the dissemination of the data among students and teachers via private messaging systems. The questionnaire includes questions, mainly designed by using a Likert scale. On average, it took the respondents 20 minutes to complete the survey. The responses to these questions were initially collected by the Google drive excel database. After fully completing the survey, all answers were directly exported into an SPSS file and analyzed. 2. As a qualitative method, interviews with experts was distinguished. The experts were involved based on the relevant experience in policy/strategy developing experience, skills in implementation and monitoring. The expert interview questionnaire covers questions related to the existing regulations and policies, capacities, coordination of involved parties, technological availability, and delivered models of e-learning in an emergency. To this end, interviews with representatives of the Government, independent experts, involved CSOs and international organizations were conducted. An important approach is the application of the saturation method when the number of experts is determined by the collected information. 3. Statistical data collection stage of the study involves the collection of statistical data. In case of missing data for the reporting year, the most recent available data can be collected. In the final stage, all the data are standardized, on the basis of which the INDEX is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is the lowest level of preparedness and 100 is the highest.

Finally, an emergency situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic has raised awareness of the need for schools and education systems to be prepared for different emergencies. This global crisis made it clear that countries should develop and have a coping strategy for mitigating the adverse impact of the pandemic as well as identify and provide additional support to the most vulnerable groups. This challenge is an opportunity for those schools not having a strategy for emergency situations to develop one and to use it during such eventualities. School closures have shown that online teaching and learning preparedness is not only a trend but also a must to achieve success in the educational process. The effectiveness of distance learning and educational process in general mostly depend on the relevant professional-pedagogical skills of the teaching community, the willingness of teachers to constantly improve and develop, on teachers’ creative thinking, motivation to teach at school, etc. Different international studies have shown that in order to have an effective education system, it is important to have a highly qualified pedagogical community. The effectiveness of the education system is largely measured by the achievements of the students. And the achievements of the students significantly depend on the high professional and pedagogical skills and capacities of teachers. Thus, education systems successfully meet the challenges of emergencies if they regularly evaluate and monitor the system's preparedness for emergencies.

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