Children and COVID-19 Research Library

In Mongolia, following school closures and term break from February to September 2020 affecting more than 600,000 children, the Government put learning at the heart of reopening, dedicating the first month of the new school term to the assessment of learning and remedial lessons and activities. UNICEF supported the Ministry of Education and Science in the development and distribution of teacher guidance for remedial classes covering all core subjects from pre-primary to upper secondary.

This research is aimed to investigate this change in Chinese high school students’ studying behavior and their learning efficiency. Previous researches have revealed that the COVID-19 outbreak already brought mental and emotional stress to college students and young teenagers, which might cause their learning behaviors to change. However, as there were no researches that are based on a population of high school students, we aimed to fill this gap in previous research and examine the changes in high school students’ studying efficiencies.

This paper's proposal is that students aged between 10 and 12 can benefit from interacting with a friendly learning companion using p-code such as Alcody. The hypothesis is that students (aged between 10 and 12) with a knowledge of Scratch will be able to significantly improve their scores by using a learning companion to teach them how to program even during the COVID-19 pandemic. To check the hypothesis, an experiment was carried out during the 2019/2020 academic year with 137 students in Ecuador. A significant improvement in the scores of the students was recorded together with high satisfaction.

While remote learning measures are essential for mitigating the short-term and long-term consequences of COVID-19 school closures, little is known about their impact on and effectiveness for learning.

This working paper contributes to filling this gap by: 1. Exploring how disrupted schooling may affect foundational learning skills, using data from MICS6 (Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys - round 6) in 2017–2019; 2. Examining how countries are delivering and monitoring remote learning based on data from the UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank’s National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures survey; and 3. Presenting promising key practices for the effective delivery and monitoring of remote learning.

This report provides an overarching framework that focuses on how policymakers as well as educators can support equitable, effective teaching and learning regardless of the medium through which that takes place. This framework provides research, state and local examples, and policy recommendations in 10 key areas that speak both to transforming learning and to closing opportunity and achievement gaps.

Some countries are starting to reopen schools as others develop plans to do so following widespread and extended closures due to COVID-19. Using data from two surveys and 164 countries, this research brief describes the educational strategies countries are putting into place, or plan to, in order to mitigate learning impacts of extended school closures, particularly for the most vulnerable children. In addition, it highlights emerging good practices.

Some countries are starting to reopen schools as others develop plans to do so following widespread and extended closures due to COVID-19. Using data from two surveys and 164 countries, this research brief describes the educational strategies countries are putting into place, or plan to, in order to mitigate learning impacts of extended school closures, particularly for the most vulnerable children. In addition, it highlights emerging good practices.

This research brief is one of a series that explores the impact of COVID-19 on education. It focuses on the potential parental role in learning and its association with foundational reading and numeracy skills. Fifty-three per cent of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text by the end of primary school age. In low-income countries, the learning crisis is even more acute, with the ‘learning poverty’ rate reaching 90 per cent. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, 191 countries have implemented countrywide school closures, affecting 1.6 billion learners worldwide. In India alone, 320 million students from pre-primary to tertiary level are affected by school closures. In sub-Saharan Africa, 240 million are affected. With children currently not able to study in classrooms, the importance of learning at home is amplified and the task of supporting children’s learning has fallen on parents at a much larger rate. This is a significant burden, particularly for those who are also teleworking and those with limited schooling themselves.