A new study re­leased last Fri­day 26th March by the Unit­ed Na­tions, re­veals that more than 100 mil­lion more chil­dren than ex­pect­ed, are falling be­hind the min­i­mum pro­fi­cien­cy lev­el in read­ing, due to COVID-re­lat­ed school clo­sures.

Ac­cord­ing to the study from the UN Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion (UN­ESCO) ‘One year in­to COVID’: Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Ed­u­ca­tion re­cov­ery to avoid a gen­er­a­tional cat­a­stro­phe, is key as even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, the num­ber of chil­dren lack­ing ba­sic read­ing skills was on a down­ward curve, glob­al­ly.

In 2020, the pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed 460 mil­lion chil­dren ex­pe­ri­enc­ing read­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, jumped to 584 mil­lion. The rise of more than 20 per­cent, wiped out two decades of ed­u­ca­tion gains, the agency said.

Learn­ing loss­es

Since the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, com­plete or par­tial clo­sures have dis­rupt­ed school­ing for an av­er­age of 40 weeks, says the re­port, with the high­est learn­ing loss­es pro­ject­ed to be in the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion, and in Cen­tral and South­ern Asia.

Ac­cord­ing to new da­ta from a joint sur­vey con­duct­ed by UN­ESCO and the UN Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF), on­ly a quar­ter of stu­dents are ben­e­fit­ing from re­me­di­al ed­u­ca­tion. While ’One year in­to COVID’ finds that a re­turn to the pre-pan­dem­ic path­way may take a decade, it un­der­scores that re­cov­ery could oc­cur by 2024.

Pri­ori­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion

To tack­le what UN­ESCO has called a po­ten­tial “gen­er­a­tional cat­a­stro­phe”, it is call­ing for schools to re­open with greater sup­port for mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, not just ed­u­ca­tors but dig­i­tal in­no­va­tors and strate­gists cre­at­ing ini­tia­tives to pre­vent stu­dents drop­ping out, and an ac­cel­er­a­tion of the avail­abil­i­ty of dig­i­tal learn­ing tools.

Yes­ter­day, UN­ESCO con­vened a meet­ing with ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters from all over the world to eval­u­ate COVID-19 learn­ing dis­rup­tions and un­rav­el so­lu­tions on how to pri­ori­tise ed­u­ca­tion re­cov­ery to avoid a gen­er­a­tional cat­a­stro­phe.

UN­ESCO’s Glob­al Ed­u­ca­tion Coali­tion shared its first progress re­port card:

Launched one year ago to sup­port learn­ing con­ti­nu­ity, the Coali­tion has 170 pub­lic, pri­vate and civ­il so­ci­ety part­ners in some 100 coun­tries.

At least 400 mil­lion learn­ers and 12 mil­lion teach­ers are ben­e­fit­ting di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly from the Coali­tion’s ac­tions, in­clud­ing through ac­cess to new­ly es­tab­lished on­line plat­forms, ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources, digi­tised cur­ric­u­la and train­ing, ac­cord­ing to UN­ESCO.

From keep­ing schools open to bridg­ing the dig­i­tal di­vide – from ad­dress­ing dropouts and learn­ing loss­es to call­ing for more ed­u­ca­tion fund­ing - UN­ESCO has been lead­ing the way through in­ten­sive part­ner­ships and in­no­va­tions dur­ing the past year to pre­vent a “gen­er­a­tional cat­a­stro­phe” and build more re­silient and in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems.

Re­duc­ing dis­rup­tors and sup­port­ing teach­ers

Pro­tect­ing the phys­i­cal and men­tal health of stu­dents, teach­ers and school per­son­nel is es­sen­tial. School clo­sures have brought a ma­jor dis­rup­tion in the lives of chil­dren and youth, af­fect­ing their so­cio-emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and well-be­ing, as well as their so­cial life and re­la­tion­ships. As two-thirds of the world’s stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is still af­fect­ed by full or par­tial school clo­sures, the pan­dem­ic is tak­ing a ris­ing toll on their men­tal health.

To en­able a safe re­turn to school, the world’s 100 mil­lion teach­ers must be giv­en pri­or­i­ty in vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns. The pan­dem­ic di­rect­ly af­fect­ed 63 mil­lion pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary teach­ers. Dur­ing school clo­sures, they were re­quired to con­duct dis­tance teach­ing with no time to pre­pare and of­ten with lim­it­ed guid­ance and re­sources. Teach­ers had to mod­i­fy cur­ric­u­la and adapt les­son plans to car­ry on with in­struc­tion us­ing low and no-tech so­lu­tions. They need con­tin­ued train­ing on re­mote teach­ing, avail­able tech­nolo­gies, and al­ter­na­tive flex­i­ble ped­a­go­gies for on­line, blend­ed and of­fline learn­ing dur­ing fu­ture school clo­sures.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the fu­ture of ed­u­ca­tion

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, some 3.6 bil­lion peo­ple are still lack­ing an In­ter­net con­nec­tion. This means that at least 463 mil­lion or near­ly one-third of stu­dents around the globe can­not ac­cess re­mote learn­ing, main­ly due to a lack of on­line learn­ing poli­cies or lack of equip­ment need­ed to con­nect from home. Most stu­dents do not have the ap­pro­pri­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty, de­vice and dig­i­tal skills re­quired to find and use ed­u­ca­tion­al con­tent de­pen­dent on tech­nol­o­gy.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN, near­ly 500 mil­lion stu­dents from pre-pri­ma­ry to up­per-sec­ondary school did not have any ac­cess to any re­mote learn­ing—three quar­ters of those lived in the poor­est house­holds or rur­al ar­eas. This enor­mous dig­i­tal di­vide shows how con­nec­tiv­i­ty has be­come a key fac­tor to guar­an­tee the right to ed­u­ca­tion. Dig­i­tal skills and learn­ing must be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems in or­der to ad­dress the in­jus­tice of the dig­i­tal di­vide. This cru­cial is­sue is among many cur­rent­ly be­ing de­bat­ed through ‘UN­ESCO’s Fu­tures of Ed­u­ca­tion Ini­tia­tive’, a glob­al con­ver­sa­tion to reimag­ine how knowl­edge and learn­ing can shape the fu­ture of hu­man­i­ty and the plan­et. The re­port is due to come out in No­vem­ber 2021.

We must adapt with the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion by putting in place new meth­ods and new in­no­v­a­tive tools. Ac­quir­ing knowl­edge has nev­er been as pos­si­ble as it is to­day with the In­ter­net but we must be aware of the in­equities and en­sure that “No child is left be­hind!”

Check the link be­low for more in­for­ma­tion on UN­ESCO’s Glob­al mon­i­tor­ing of COVID-19 Im­pact on Ed­u­ca­tion

https://en.un­esco.org/covid19/ed­u­ca­tion­re­sponse/