Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The education sector in Armenia has challenges with low learning levels and additional pressures imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Bank’s human capital index (HCI) shows that a child who starts school at age four in Armenia can expect to complete 11.3 years of schooling by the age of 18. An analysis of learning outcomes factoring in what children actually learn, however, shows that expected years of schooling equate to only eight years. This results in a learning gap of 3.3 years. The COVID-19 pandemic may have exerted additional hurdles to improve learning outcomes. Due to the pandemic, Armenia risks losing 0.3 learning-adjusted year of schooling as calculated by World Bank simulations. This translates to an average annual earning loss of US$6,457 per student. Additionally, around 26 percent of children at late primary-school age in Armenia are not proficient in reading.2 This, also known as learning poverty, means being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by age 10. Learning poverty in Armenia is 17.2 percentage points worse than the average for the ECA region (8.9 percent on average). The main motivation of the report is to analyze critical human capital dynamics that play into labor productivity, especially that of learning and its determinants. Armenia’s performance in international assessments have been relatively below average but slightly improving over the last decade. This report is also exploring the overall performance of Armenia in terms of learning, where any improvements have occurred and whether they are timely and sufficient in ensuring sustainable growth and productivity. The report will first look at the background of the education system in Armenia including education expenditures and explain the methodology of the study; then analyze the quality of education; focus on differences in student performance across regions followed by factors associated with overall learning outcomes. Finally, it will present recommended ways forward based on the analysis.

In the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region has suffered a triple curse, as it faced the largest combined impact in health, economic and educational terms. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on people´s lives, livelihoods, and human capital formation represents, without doubt, one of the worst crises in LAC’s history. As we seek to rebuild better and foster more inclusive and sustainable growth, the main concern, nonetheless, is not the heavy toll of the pandemic, but the future of an entire generation of children and young people who have endured this massive shock. This report is the first evidence-based assessment of this educational catastrophe in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report intends to systematically document the impact that COVID-19 has had on the region’s education sector two years after. The 24 months since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020 is described sequentially, focusing firstly on the features of the “triple curse”, and then on the direct impact on schooling, learning and skills development. The report also addresses significant cross-sectoral impacts, namely those related to digital and transferable skills.

The world is in the depths of a learning crisis, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report finds that COVID-19-related school closures and other disruptions have sharply increased learning poverty, a measure of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. The report, The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update, a joint publication of the World Bank, UNICEF, FCDO, USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in partnership with UNESCO, stresses that even before the pandemic, there was already a learning crisis. Since then, COVID-19 has sharply increased learning poverty, with COVID-driven school disruptions exacerbating the severe pre-pandemic learning crisis.

This research brief is one of a series of six briefs, which provide an overview of available evidence shown in the Campbell-UNICEF Mega-Map of the effectiveness of interventions to improve child well-being in low- and middle-income countries. Five of these briefs summarize evidence as mapped against the five goal areas of UNICEF’s 2018–2021 Strategic Plan. A sixth special brief was added to focus specifically on COVID-19 and other epidemics and major crises. It is anticipated that the briefs will also be useful for others working in the child well-being space.

This article analyses data from a study that explored distance learning teaching and nursery school children's experiences in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Douala, Cameroon. Following the spread of COVID-19 to Africa, the Cameroon Government placed emphasis on the impact of the pandemic on the socio-economic sector and actions to support this sector. There has been no reported research on the effects of the pandemic on the early childhood education sector and how children have experienced it. This article discusses distance learning techniques employed by teachers from a private nursery school and the views and feelings of young children whose teacher encouraged them to draw and tell stories about their experiences. Engaging in such conversations empowered and encouraged children to verbalise their COVID-19 Lockdown experiences. These conversations can help the teacher rethink and seek new ways to understand and guide children through challenging situations. In addition, the insights gained from the study can be helpful for policymakers concerned with maximising the capacity for schools and families to ensure continuous learning for all children in the event of a crisis.

With the closure of schools as a result of the social distancing plan, the negative emotions that individuals experience became complicated. Therefore, the present study provided a deep understanding of the concerns and stresses of parents, students, and teachers about the process of social distance planning and reopening of schools during COVID-19 pandemic. This directed qualitative content analysis was conducted in 2020. The data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with teachers (n=28), students (n=20), and their parents (n=32) in Tuiserkan County. Sampling was performed by purposeful sampling method with the maximum variation. Data analysis was performed simultaneously with data, collected by content analysis method.

Since the spring of 2020, many early childhood education programs (pre-K, K, 1st, and 2nd grades) had to close as governments around the world took serious measures to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. As a result, the pandemic forced many early childhood teachers to start teaching online and continue supporting their students remotely. Unfortunately, there were few lessons that these teachers could learn from experience to cope with this change since online learning in early childhood settings had been scarce until the outbreak of the pandemic. In response, the goal of this interview study was to investigate how early childhood teachers in public and private schools implemented online learning during the pandemic, the challenges they encountered when teaching online, and their suggestions to address these challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to worldwide school closures, with a risk of learning loss. Sweden kept primary schools open, but it is unknown whether student and teacher absence and pandemic-related stress factors affected teaching and student progress negatively. In this study, reading assessment data from 97,073 Swedish primary school students (grades 1-3) were analysed to investigate potential learning loss.

Contextualized in the prolonged period of COVID-19-related school suspension in Hong Kong, the present study unravels relationships among socioeconomic status (SES), parental involvement, and learning outcomes for a matched sample of 186 primary and 932 secondary school students and their parents who participated in the eCitizen Education 360 survey. Three-step latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed different types of parental involvement at home and in school. For the primary school sample, students’ SES did not predict membership in the parental involvement typology, but students whose parents provided more home monitoring and support had the highest level of online self-efficacy. As for the secondary student sample, students whose parents provided more home monitoring and support tended to have access to more home learning resources. Students whose parents provided home monitoring and support had the highest levels of online self-efficacy, acquisition of digital skills, and cognitive-emotional regulation, and were the least worried about school resumption. The study underscores complex patterns of parental involvement and identifies effective parental involvement practices that contribute to students’ home online learning during the school suspension.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with reduced access to health services and worsening health outcomes for HIV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Through the analysis of data from an evaluation study of a combination intervention for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in South Africa, this study sought to examine the way in which implementation and service provision were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions, describing the adaptation implementers made to respond to this context. The intervention was implemented from 2019 in South African districts identified as high priority, given the high rates of HIV and teenage pregnancy amongst AGYW.

This study aims to analyze the implementation of Distance Learning (PJJ) in biology learning in high school including implementation, obstacles, and results. The method used in this research is descriptive method. The population includes all high school students in the Bogor Regency area for the 2020/2021 academic year and biology teachers in the Bogor Regency area with a sample of 337 students from 10 schools and 60 biology subject teachers. This research data collection technique uses a questionnaire or a questionnaire via google form which is analyzed by describing various research results in the form of percentages.

The covid-19 outbreak has changed the educational structure and psychology of child development, the role of teachers, parents and the environment is needed for good development. In the new normal era after covid 19, what is the paradigm model in children's education. This article aims to determine the influence of the educational environment and parenting patterns on children's growth and development in the new normal era after covid 19 in the Babadan sub-district playgroup, Ponorogo district. This research is a field study where to measure the influence of the environment and parents on children's growth and development in the new normal era after covid 19 in the Babadan Subdistrict Playgroup, Ponorogo Regency by using the bivariate correlation test in three schools, namely the Al-Islam playgroup, the Permata Hati playgroup and the Aisiyah playgroup.

This study aims to discover the literacy skills of 5th grade primary school students during covid-19 outbreak in Mandailing Natal Regency based on teachers’ perceptions. Descriptive qualitative approach was applied with a simple quantitative support in form of percentages. The respondents in this study were 23 primary school teachers of fifth year class from 23 different primary schools located in 23 districs in Mandailing Natal Regency. To obtain the data, a semi structured interview was conducted adapted from four literacy skills consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The obtained data subsequently were analyzed by thematic analysis based on specific separated themes.

The unprecedented arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic made the schools in the country adopt online mediums and platforms, so that learning may continue without causing potential harm to every student's health. Due to the non-availability of data on online distance learning readiness of senior high school students in Public Senior High School X, together with the dearth of literature that could guide school administrators and stakeholders in the school in crafting empirically established programs, projects, and innovation, the study was conducted. The study employed a descriptive-comparative and -correlational approach. It was participated by 346 senior high school students determined through multi-stage sampling. Their level of online distance learning readiness was assessed using a standardized instrument. Data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman rho rank correlation.

Building on aspects of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory centering around social interaction and adult scaffolding as essential to children’s learning, this study investigated the most prominently used strategies by eight teachers to scaffold social and emotional learning (SEL) in preschool children (ages 3–4) in the context of remote instruction during the 2021–2022 school year amidst COVID-19. These teachers (seven females and one male) came from two urban preschools funded by their local Board of Education in the state of New Jersey in the United States. These teachers (ages 28–44 years, M = 32 years) varied in teaching experience from five to 29 years (M = 13 years). Each teacher was interviewed for an average of 40 min virtually via Zoom.