LAGOS – A World Bank report has indicated that COVID-related school closures risk pushing an additional 72 million primary school-aged children into learning poverty.
According to the two fresh reports by the World Bank, the implications are that affected children will be unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 as it outlined a new vision for learning and the investments and policies, including on education technology, that countries can implement today to realize this vision.
The global organization said the pandemic is amplifying the global learning crisis that already existed, saying it could increase the percentage of primary-school-age children in low- and middle-income countries living in learning poverty to 63 per cent from 53 per cent, and it puts this generation of students at risk of losing about $10 trillion in future lifetime earnings, an amount equivalent to almost 10 per cent of global GDP.
The new report tagged: “Realizing the Future of Learning: From Learning Poverty to Learning for Everyone, Everywhere”, lays out a vision for the future of learning that can guide countries today in their investments and policy reforms.
It said the vision was to enable more countries to build more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems and ensure that all children learn with joy, rigour and purpose in school and beyond the school walls.
World Bank in the accompanying report titled: “Reimagining Human Connections: Technology and Innovation at the World Bank”, presents the World Bank’s new approach to guide investments in education technology, so that technology can truly serve as a tool to make education systems more resilient to catastrophic shocks like COVID-19 and help in reimagining the way education is delivered.
