Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the immediate and longer-term effects of school closures and ongoing interruptions on children’s learning have been a source of considerable apprehension to many. In an attempt to anticipate and mitigate the effect of school closures, researchers and policymakers have turned to the learning loss literature, research that estimates the effect of summer holidays on academic achievement. However, school closures due to COVID-19 have taken place under very different conditions, making the utility of such a literature debatable. Instead, this study is based on a rapid evidence assessment of research on learning disruption – extended and unplanned periods of school closure following unprecedented events, such as SARs or weather-related events.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures around the world, affecting almost 1.6 billion students. The effects of even short disruptions in a child’s schooling on their learning and well-being have been shown to be acute and long lasting. The capacities of education systems to respond to the crisis by delivering remote learning and support to children and families have been diverse yet uneven.

This report reviews the emerging evidence on remote learning throughout the global school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic to help guide decision-makers to build more effective, sustainable, and resilient education systems for current and future crises.

This paper presents a new estimate that pre-primary school closures in 2020 may cost today’s young children US$1.6 trillion in lost earnings over their lifetimes. Children in middle-income countries will be most greatly affected. However, most low- and middle- income countries are leaving pre-primary education out of their responses to COVID-19. This paper also draws lessons from evaluations of accelerated, bridging and remedial programmes on how introducing or expanding these transition programmes in the early years can mitigate the long-term impact on learning from pre-primary school closures.

Children in the Sylhet division, in the Northeast of Bangladesh, face complex challenges in accessing quality education, at all school levels. The region ranks among the poorest performers in learning attainment across education levels. UNICEF Bangladesh and its partners have leveraged resources from the Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative to deliver three alternative learning pathways for out-of-school children and adolescents in remote areas of Sylhet. The three pathways cover key transition points in a child’s education: Getting ready to start school (Pre-Primary Education programme), learning foundational skills (A​bility-B​ased Accelerated Learning programme) and entering the job market (Alternative Learning Pathway programme). This report presents evidence on the achievements of the three programmes, highlighting key policy recommendations. The findings draw on analysis of programme monitoring data, qualitative case studies, focus group discussions and interviews. This paper is one of a series of research reports presenting emerging evidence on programmes supported by the LUL initiative, which aims to expand quality learning opportunities for disadvantaged children in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, Madagascar and Nepal.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic closed most Canadian public schools for six consecutive months between March and September. This paper explores possible impacts of that closure on student achievement. Longstanding research suggests that lengthy periods of time out of school generally create losses of literacy and numeracy skills and widen student achievement gaps. New American studies have attributed sizeable learning losses to the COVID-19 closures. In lieu of comparable Canadian data, this paper extrapolates from summer learning research to estimate likely shortfalls in literacy and numeracy skills.

This report focuses on the impacts of the pandemic on learning proficiency, specifically as measured by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 4.1.1. Over the last couple of decades, there has been a growing awareness of how crucial learning proficiency, especially that of younger children, is for human development.  The evidence  is  clear  that  improvements  in  proficiency  underpin  future  economic development,  and  the  building  of  more  cohesive  and  equal societies.  The indicators  on  learning proficiency are among the most discussed indicators within the SDG framework.

This Note presents results from a series of simulations that aim to capture the impacts that school closures in Bangladesh might have on the learning levels, enrollment and future earnings of children and students using a methodological tool developed by the Education Global Practice of the World Bank .

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.