7 million students will likely drop out of schools — WBGE

In a report published by World Bank Group Education, it has been revealed that close to seven million students from primary up to secondary education could drop out due to the income shock of novel coronavirus alone.

The report using data on 157 countries revealed that both the global level of schooling as well as learning will fall.

The report presents the results of simulations considering different lengths of school closure (3, 5, and 7 months) and different levels of mitigation effectiveness (mostly remote learning), resulting in an optimistic, intermediate, and pessimistic global scenario.

According to the report titled, Simulating The Potential Impacts Of Covid-19 School Closures On Schooling And Learning Outcomes: A Set Of Global Estimates, COVID-19 could result in a loss of between 0.3 and 0.9 years of schooling adjusted for quality.

“Close to 7 million students from primary up to secondary education could drop out due to the income shock of the pandemic alone,” the report reads.

“In the absence of any compensatory actions when children return to schools, students from the current school cohort could face, on average, a reduction of $355, $872, and $1,408 in yearly earnings depending on the scenario considered,” it adds.

World Bank Group Education report also disclosed that globally, a school shutdown of five months could generate learning losses that have a present value of $10 trillion.

“By this measure, the world could stand to lose as much as 16% of the investments that governments make in this cohort of students’ basic education.

“Without drastic remedial action, the world could thus face a substantial setback to the goal of halving the percentage of learning poor — and be unable to meet the goal by 2030,” it explains.

The world is undergoing the most extensive school closures ever witnessed.

To combat COVID-19, more than 180 countries mandated temporary school closures, leaving, at its peak in early April, close to 1.6 billion children and youth out of school.

By the end of May 2020, 20 school systems had opened partially, and about 1.2 billion students remained out of school.