COVID Educational Impact: About 10 Million Children ‘May Never Make It Back’ To School Post Corona

The COVID-10 pandemic has led to an "unprecedented education emergency" and disrupted children's education so much so that up to 9.7 million children will be faced with the risk of dropping out of school spurred by the economic crisis, according to a report by Save the Children.

Confirming the same, Inger Ashing, Save the Children CEO said, "Around 10 million children may never return to school. This is an unprecedented education emergency and governments must urgently invest in learning"

COVID Educational Impact

The UK based NGO also pointed out that in early April 2020, an estimated 1.6 billion children globally - around 91% of the total students population were out of school, in an effort to halt the spread of coronavirus pandemic, in its assessment of the COVID educational impact.

"For the first time in human history, an entire generation of children globally have had their education disrupted," the UK Charity group added.

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Citing UNSECO Global Education report, the British charity group said that despite the best efforts by governments worldwide to provide remote learning to children as an alternate to physical learning amid the pandemic, close to 500 million children and youngsters were currently excluded from the public educational provision.

Assessing the COVID Educational Impact, Save the Children report estimates that an additional 90 to 117 million children will be pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic driven 'economic fallout' contributing to more children dropping out of schools.

The survey report also points that even before the pandemic, approximately 258 million children were out of schools, including 130 million girls, and the COVID crisis has only worsened the situation.

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Achieving UNESCO's SDG4

The UK charity group report identified 12 countries - Niger, Mali, Chad, Liberia, Afghanistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire as being at the 'extreme risk' of falling behind in their progress towards attaining UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) - a good quality education for every last child due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

"If we allow this education crisis to unfold, the impact on children's futures will be long lasting. The promise the world has made to ensure all children have access to a quality education by 2030, will be set back by years," Inger Ashing stated.

In achieving the UN Development Goals by 2030, and overcome the COVID educational impact, the UK based NGO stressed on the need for a well-planned, inclusive, gender responsive and coordinated global education action plan; increased investment in education and learning by world governments and donors, COVID-19 education plan by national governments to ensure learning opportunities for marginalised children, and focus on safety and health of all children amid the pandemic.