Education Crisis Due to School Closures

 The largest impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on children in the world has come from the harms of school closures vs the virus itself.  This week UNICEF released this report that nearly 77 million children have have been out of the classroom for the past 18 months.  This is a devastating public health disaster that seldom makes the headlines.  Some details from the report:

Since the onset of the pandemic, schools were completely closed for an average of 18 weeks (4.5 months) worldwide. If partial closures are accounted for, the average duration of closures represents 34 weeks (8.5 months) worldwide, or nearly a full academic year. 

For UNESCO, the past two academic years have resulted in learning losses and increased drop-out rates, impacting the most vulnerable students disproportionately.  

Schools in most countries have adopted some forms of sanitation protocol such as wearing masks, using hand sanitizers, improving ventilation and social distancing, which were also key to re-opening schools last year. 

The educational deficits created by school closures will be felt for many years to come, long after this pandemic is over.  In my opinion this has been the worst part of the public health response to the pandemic, its harms will far outweigh any possible benefits by a significant margin.   It will be one for the history books in terms of the (lack of) evidence-based public health decision making, which imposed disproportionate costs and burdens on the portion of the population least at risk from serious illness and death from the virus. The education, emotional and mental health toll of school closures is something I have witnessed first-hand with my own three children. Prolonged school closures are a global tragedy that should have never happened.  When the dust settles with respect to the media fixation on positive COVID-19, the magnitude of the carnage of harm some of the actions we have taken will have to be reckoned with.  

Cheers,

Colin