School closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic have caused almost "irreversible" losses in terms of children's education around the world, according to Unicef. More than 616 million students are still affected today by full or partial school closures, the UN children's agency said.
In many countries, the situation has not only deprived millions of children of basic knowledge but also affected their mental health, increased the risk of abuse and prevented many of them from accessing "a regular source of food."
"We are all facing almost irreversible losses in terms of children's school attendance," said Robert Jenkins, Unicef's head of education. And reopening schools "is not enough," he stressed, calling for children to be supported to regain "their lost education."
Unicef noted that because of these "losses in education" due to school closures, up to 70% of 10-year-old children cannot read or understand a simple text. This figure was as high as 53% before the pandemic in low- and middle-income countries. For example, in Ethiopia, children learned 30-40% of the maths they would learn in a normal school year in primary school, Unicef estimates.[BR] This phenomenon also occurred in rich countries, such as in the US, where losses were observed in Texas, California or Maryland, among others.
Early school leaving is also a problem: in South Africa, around 400-500,000 students dropped out of school between March 2020 and July 2021. Moreover, in addition to increasing anxiety and depression in children and young people, more than 370 million children around the world were deprived of school meals as their schools were closed. In some cases, school meals are the only stable source of food for many of these children.
Source: CNA
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