Pandemic could push 72 million more children into “learning poverty”
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COVID-19-related school closures risk pushing an additional 72 million primary school aged children into “learning poverty” – meaning that they are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10, the World Bank said Wednesday.
The pandemic is amplifying the global learning crisis that already existed, according to two new World Bank reports, which outlined a new vision for learning and the investments and policies needed, including on education technology.
The pandemic could increase the percentage of primary school-age children in low- and middle-income countries living in learning poverty to 63 percent from 53 percent, and it puts this generation of students at risk of losing about 10 trillion dollars in future life-time earnings, an amount equivalent to almost 10 percent of global GDP, the reports showed.
School closures as a result of COVID-19 have left most students on the planet out of school – 1.6 billion students at the peak in April 2020, and still almost 700 million students today, according to the reports.