COVID-19 has locked children out of their education with girls at highest risk
来源:World Economic Forum;发表于:2022-03-11;人气指数:313
COVID-19
has locked children out of their education with girls at highest risk
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/covid-has-locked-children-out-of-their-education-with-girls-at-highest-risk/
A young Indian girl
in school uniform.
Image: Sushrut Koche
via Unsplash | https://unsplash.com/photos/UzWFXN8wb4A
17 Feb 2022
Ruma Bhargava
Project Lead, Fourth
Industrial Revolution for Health, India, World Economic Forum, C4IR India
Dr Megha Bhargava
Deputy Commissioner
Income Tax, Ministry of Finance, Government of India
*The impact of
COVID-19 on children's education has been profound.
*At present, 38
million children, worldwide, are entirely lacking schooling. The effects of
this lack of schooling will be far-reaching for the most vulnerable.
*To mobilize and
support learning continuity, UNESCO has established the Global Education
Coalition for the end goal of protecting the right to education.
While the COVID-19
crisis has largely spared children from its devastating health effects, its
impact on their education has been profound. The effects of school closures
have been far-reaching, and for the most vulnerable children, the negative
impacts will be lifelong.
The disruptions
COVID-19 have generated come with a steep cost. At present, 38 million
children, worldwide, are entirely lacking schooling. Since the onset of the
pandemic, children around the world have lost an estimated 1.8 trillion hours
of in-person learning.
One hundred and
thirty one million students ranging from pre-primary (ages 3 through 6) to
upper secondary (ages 14 through 18) education in 11 countries fully missed at
least three quarters of classroom instruction time from March 2020 to September
2021.
With these partial
school closures and disruptions in home life, over 100 million additional
children will fall below the minimum proficiency level in reading.
The losses in
learning at a young age are far-reaching. They can easily result in falling
behind in school, finding it difficult to ever catch up and affecting whether
they continue their education.
Eleven million girls,
an alarming figure, might not return to school, turning back decades of
progress toward gender equality, and more so, putting girls at higher risk for
adolescent pregnancy, early and forced marriage and violence. Seen through the
lens of gender, the picture is more dire.
Image: Save the Children/UNICEF
(2021), Impact of COVID-19 on children living in poverty: A technical note
Uneven internet
access worsens existing inequalities
When the COVID-19
crisis arose and schools shuttered, governments across the world were, overall,
responsive to the call for remote learning solutions. A range of means to teach
children remotely arose, including TV, radio, recorded audio and videos, as
well as live sessions on mobile.
However, 2.2
billion people (two in three children and young people aged 25 years or
less) lack an internet connection at home. Internet coverage is alarmingly
scarce in low-income countries: 6% coverage compared to 87% internet coverage
in high-income countries. Globally, three out of four students who can’t be
reached by remote learning opportunities come from rural areas and/or poor
households, which further exacerbates existing inequalities in access to
education.
Composition of
students who cannot be reached, by sex, household wealth and area of residency,
by country economic classification.
Image: Save the
Children/UNICEF
When countries find
themselves unprepared for remote learning
UNICEF recently
shared a new composite indicator called The Remote Learning Readiness
Index (RLRI) that measures countries’ readiness to deliver remote
learning.
While countries such
as the Philippines, Barbados and Argentina scored high marks on the
RLRI index, more than 31 countries are unprepared to deploy remote
learning during crisis times – that’s more than 200 million schoolchildren. The
RLRI is also not a full picture and fails to measure challenges beyond its
assessment.
Poor access to
connectivity has become a powerful barrier that prevents children and young
people from accessing effective and interactive forms of learning and its
effects are long-reaching.
Impacts beyond
learning
School closures
impact children beyond their learning, targeting their mental health and
well-being. A survey conducted by UNESCO revealed that children,
worldwide, are struggling with social isolation, access to nutrition and a lack
of physical exercise, all of which affect the child’s development.
Key challenges of
school closure.
Image: Save the
Children/UNICEF
The state of impact on India
In India, COVID-19
has most impacted the education of the rural and young. One in three children
in classes I and II (grades 1 and 2) have never attended an in-person
class during the pandemic, with the youngest learners having the “least
access to technology, ”according to the 2021 Annual Status of Education Report
(ASER).
Almost one-third of
all children in classes I and II did not have a smartphone available at home.
Children living in
rural and impoverished areas suffer even greater learning isolation.
Of 15 states and
union territories, an August 2021 survey from the School Children’s Online and
Offline Learning (SCHOOL) found that that only 8% of rural children were
studying online regularly. Thirty seven percent were not studying at all.
Nearly half of the
children in the sample were illiterate.
Two-thirds of the
parents from the SCHOOL survey stated their children, unable to access
schooling online, have fallen behind, with reading and writing skills in
decline.
Education recovery
and capacity must be a priority
As the pandemic
continues to unravel, school closures and remote learning will remain a challenge,
affecting a generation of children’s learning, development and well-being.
Therefore, it’s critical to make education recovery a priority to avoid a
generational catastrophe.
This won’t be the
last global health crisis we face, so we must prioritize strengthening the
resilience of education systems everywhere, starting with the countries most
unprepared for mobile learning. Nations must build capacity to deliver quality
education remotely, targeting vulnerable and marginalized children who are
often overlooked.
To mobilize and
support learning continuity, UNESCO has established the Global Education
Coalition for the end goal of protecting the right to education.
We must build on
lessons learned from this crisis with education worldwide, creating
comprehensive preparedness plans and strong national infrastructure to deliver
education through different modalities. Once the current crisis subsides,
countries must continue to scale up distance learning and incorporate aspects
into everyday schooling for all children and youth, so our transition into the
next crisis is more seamless.
Vigilance is -- and
will be -- essential to prevent the learning of the most vulnerable from
falling through the cracks during this present crisis and future ones.
This article was
originally published in The Daily
Guardian.