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A 'generational catastrophe': 24 million children will never return to school post-Covid, UN warns

High school students wearing PPE attend class at a school in Yangon, Myanmar - LYNN BO BO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
High school students wearing PPE attend class at a school in Yangon, Myanmar - LYNN BO BO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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The pandemic has unleashed a “generational catastrophe”, with more than one billion children in some 160 countries missing school this year, according to the United Nations.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, warned that school closures as a result of Covid-19 “could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities."

He added that even before the pandemic hit, the world faced a “learning crisis” with well over 250 million children out of school and just a quarter of pupils in developing countries leaving secondary school with “basic skills”.

But the current crisis has triggered the most severe disruption to the world’s education system in history, Mr Guterres said, with some 40 million children missing out on education “in their critical preschool year”.

According to the UN education agency Unesco and partner organisations this is only set to continue. Close to 24 million children in 180 countries are at risk of dropping out of education altogether - from pre-primary to university level - next year due to the economic repercussions of the pandemic.

“We are at a defining moment for the world's children and young people,” Mr Guterres said, in a video message to launch a new Unesco policy brief to tackle the education crisis.

Schoolchildren learn with the help of pre-recorded lessons in Dandwal village, Maharashtra, India  - REUTERS/Prashant Waydande
Schoolchildren learn with the help of pre-recorded lessons in Dandwal village, Maharashtra, India - REUTERS/Prashant Waydande

“The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come,” he added.

The 26-page policy document, which called for action in four key areas, noted that roughly 100 countries have not yet announced a reopening date for schools. Mr Guterres said this should be a “top priority” for governments across the globe.

Commenting on the new policy document Heather Simpson, chief programme officer at the global education organisation Room to Read, said the report “must serve as an urgent wake up call for investment in education for low-income communities”.

“Inevitably pandemics impact lower-income communities hardest,” Ms Simpson said. “We are witnessing these children’s hopes of an education dashed by a lack of access to digital resources and books at home, as well as battling against systemic societal inequalities, and unbearable economic pressures.”

She added that girls are at particular risk - with figures suggesting that half of girls living in low-income communities across Africa and Asia who are enrolled in Room to Read  education programs at risk of never returning to school again.

There is precedent for this - during the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, schools were closed for nine months to stop the spread of infection.

During this period, with children out of school and vulnerable to exploitation, teenage pregnancies shot up by over 60 per cent and 11,000 girls who were previously in school got pregnant. More died from childbirth complications than Ebola itself, and many of those who did survive never returned to education, research has found.

Stefania Giannini, assistant director-general for education at Unesco, also raised concerns that the “longer schools remain closed the more devastating the impact, especially on the poorest and most vulnerable children”. She said that the crisis has amplified digital, social and gender inequalities in access to education.

Ms Giannini added that Unesco is planning to hold a high-level virtual meeting in the autumn to secure commitments from world leaders and the international community to place education at the forefront of recovery agendas from the pandemic.

According to Mr Guterres, even before the pandemic, low and middle income countries faced an education funding gap of $1.5 trillion annually - a gap that could increase by 30 per cent globally because of the coronavirus crisis.

He said that increasing financing for education must be given priority as governments allocate funds in the post-Covid era.

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