  According to the United Nations, schools' closures have impacted up to 99 per
cent of the student population in low and lower-middle-income countries. This
research-in-progress report introduces a project on Emergency Remote Teaching
(ERT) measures in the ten member states of the Economic Cooperation
Organization (ECO) with a focus on the application of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) in primary and secondary education levels.
The project takes a comparative approach within a resilient ICT-for-Development
(ICT4D) framework, where the coping, endurance, and return to pre-crisis
functionalities in education systems are studied. The preliminary research
demonstrates the impacts of the country's general COVID-19 strategy, the
education system in place, and digital infrastructure's level of development on
instigating distance-learning platforms. The paper further shows that in
addition to access to stable internet connections and digital devices, other
infrastructural factors such as access to food, electricity and health services
play a significant role in education response planning and implementation.
Human factors in the education system, such as teacher training for the usage
of ICTs, digital literacy of students and parents, and already existing
vulnerabilities in the education system pose challenges to crisis management in
the education sector. Other socio-political factors such as attitudes towards
girls' education, level of corruption, institutional capacity, and
international sanctions or available funds also make the education system less
resilient.
