Education institutions around the world fear that the covid-19 pandemic could cause long-lasting damage to their businesses, while online learning providers expect to see “huge growth”, a survey has revealed. 

Across the global education market, organisations expect to be worse off in the short-term as a result of covid-19, according to the HolonIQ survey, which included 700 responses from business leaders across 50 countries.

Half of businesses surveyed expect long-term negative impact.

Meanwhile, “the time for online has come”, according to the survey, respondents to which predict a boon for online education.

The survey revealed that 58% of ed tech businesses expect to see positive long-term impact with “huge growth in online platforms that are more sophisticated than now, online proctoring of in-home assessment and non-traditional transnational education with mixed modality”.

This comes as schools, universities and nurseries around the world have been forced to close in an attempt to contain the covid-19 pandemic.

A third of ed tech providers expect to be better off as a result of the pandemic as they expect their tech services to be in higher demand as institutions move to online provision.

The survey found that most investors in the space see no change for their business in the long term, but over 80% expect to be worse off in the short term.

More generally, respondents from Africa and the Middle East showed the most confidence in the prospects of increased demand, followed by the US, where just under half (49%) of respondents expected growth in demand over the next six months.

European and Asian respondents were less optimistic about the outlook, expecting to see a fall in demand over the same period.