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UNICEF urges pandemic hit nations to reopen schools

16 Sep 2021

  • Notes nearly 77 m students in 6 countries entirely sans edu access 
BY Shahaen Vishak The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), is calling on governments and education authorities around the world to reopen schools as soon as possible. A report published by the UNICEF on 15 September noted that around 27% of countries continue to have schools fully or partially closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation, while nearly 77 million students from six countries have almost completely missed out on their education, while an estimated 131 million students in 11 countries have missed more than three quarters of their in-person learning. “As classes resume in some countries, millions of students in others are heading into a third academic year without stepping foot in a classroom,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta H. Fore in a statement issued yesterday (16). “The losses that students are incurring from not being in school may never be recovered.” To call attention to the 18 months of lost learning due to pandemic-related school closures and to urge governments to reopen schools as soon as possible, UNICEF and its partners scheduled a shutdown of their digital channels for 18 hours starting at 1 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) yesterday. “The education crisis is still ongoing, and with each passing day that classrooms remain dark, the devastation worsens,” noted Fore. “This is a crisis we will not allow the world to ignore. Our channels are silent, but our message is loud: Every community, everywhere, must reopen schools as soon as possible.” Meanwhile, the six countries noted to have schools “almost completely closed”, as per the UNICEF report, are the Philippines, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Panama, and Kuwait. Among these, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Venezuela have the largest number of students impacted by full school closures in the past year and a half. Further, the report noted that around 27% of countries continue to have schools fully or partially closed, while data from the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) highlights that more than 870 million students at all levels are currently facing disruptions to their education. The same UNESCO data cited Sri Lanka’s schools as being closed for 63 weeks due to the pandemic, with 5.57 million learners affected. The UNESCO data further estimated a loss of 1.8 trillion hours of in-person learning for schoolchildren around the world since the onset of the pandemic. This, UNICEF stated, had led to the exacerbation of several other issues faced by disadvantaged children in several countries. UNICEF noted: “School closures have created a shadow crisis for children. Beyond falling behind in their education, many children are missing out on school-based meals and routine vaccinations, experiencing social isolation and increased anxiety, and being exposed to abuse and violence. For some, school closures have led to drop out, child labour, and child marriage. Many parents have been unable to continue with their employment while balancing their children’s care and learning needs. Some have lost their jobs entirely, pushing their families into poverty and creating a deeper economic crisis.” UNICEF also pointed out that remote learning, while aiding millions of schoolchildren in maintaining their education, has proven to be uneven in terms of technological access and the quality of the curriculum, even within communities and school districts. UNICEF thus pushed for the resumption of in-person learning, noting that schools have not been the main drivers of Covid-19 transmission and therefore, can be kept open for this purpose. However, it added that several steps would needed to be taken to curb the transmission of Covid-19 in schools, including implementing facemask wearing policies for students and staff in accordance with national and local guidelines, providing hand washing facilities and/or hand sanitiser, frequently cleaning surfaces and shared objects, ensuring adequate and appropriate ventilation, cohorting (keeping students and teachers in small groups that do not mix), staggering the start, break, bathroom, meals, and end time, and alternating physical presence, and establishing information sharing mechanisms with parents, students, and teachers. Prioritising teachers for vaccination against Covid-19 to protect them from community transmission was also recommended, although not as a prerequisite to open schools. In following these guidelines, UNICEF urged governments, local authorities, and school administrations to reopen schools as soon as possible, to ensure that the pandemic’s disruption of education does not continue further. “Schools must be the last to close and the first to reopen. We have to start putting the best interests of every child first. In all but the most extreme cases, this means getting students back into the classrooms,” explained Fore.


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