Children and COVID-19 Research Library

As cases of COVID-19 continue to spread worldwide it is becoming clear that the outbreak of this virus has implications that reach far beyond the direct impact on people’s physical health. What started as a health emergency is causing fundamental shifts in society as governments struggle to try and contain the crisis. COVID-19 is having an impact on all sectors of society across the world. But its impact does not fall equally: the virus is taking advantage of pre-existing inequalities. As the world has sought desperately to deal both with the medical impacts of the virus and to prepare a response to its many secondary effects, research on COVID-19 has accelerated. However, there is limited research on the social impacts of COVID-19 and on the consequences for young people, especially those specific to girls. Plan International commissioned research to look specifically at the impact of the current pandemic on girls and young women, collecting data from over 7,000 girls across 14 countries. The report also includes extracts from interviews with young women, reflecting on the impact COVID-19 has had on their lives in Mozambique, Brazil, Ghana and Nicaragua. The scale of this pandemic affects girls and young women in all aspects of their daily lives: their safety, wellbeing, education, economic security, health, nutrition and access to technology. All pre-existing inequalities are made worse by COVID-19. Its impact on girls and young women, who face unique vulnerabilities, needs to be acknowledged and it is their experiences and perspectives this research seeks to understand.

COVID-19 unprecedented disruption to education has the potential to roll back substantial gains made on girls’ education in recent decades, with broader immediate and longer-term effects on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to poverty reduction, health and well-being, inclusive quality education and gender equality. The guide, developed by the Malala Fund, Plan International, UNESCO, UNGEI and UNICEF, aims to help policymakers and practitioners in ministries of education and their partners address the gender dimensions of the pandemic-related school closures. It provides targeted recommendations to ensure continuity of learning while schools are closed, and to establish comprehensive, timely and evidence-based plans for reopening schools in a way that is safe, gender-responsive and child-friendly.

The COVID-19 pandemic has closed schools for over 1.6 billion children, with potentially long-term consequences. This paper provides some of the first experimental evidence on strategies to minimize the fallout of the pandemic on education outcomes. We evaluate two low-technology interventions to substitute schooling during this period: SMS text messages and direct phone calls. We conduct a rapid trial in Botswana to inform real-time policy responses collecting data at four to six-week intervals. We present results from the first wave.

This report presents learning and recommendations emerging from the Global Partners Project (GPP), an initiative to strengthen education in emergencies. The main project output has been a substantial new evidence base around a conceptual framework that investigates the ‘who’, ‘how’ and ‘so what’ of education coordination in crisis contexts.

Since December 2019, countries around the world have borne the impact of a virus that has altered the way that we do business, interact socially and receive our education. While COVID-19 has had a detrimental impact upon the world, it has also lead to a more in-depth look at the education of our children from elementary school up to secondary school. Cybersecurity is an issue for everyone, but children are a particularly vulnerable population because many are raised playing with a cellphone or a tablet and have not truly learned about the dangers involved with accessing the Internet. Instead, it’s a play area for children as they watch YouTube videos or even access social media with or without their parent’s consent.

School closures have occurred globally during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, empiric data on transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) among children and in educational settings are scarce. In Australia, most schools have remained open during the first epidemic wave, albeit with reduced student physical attendance at the epidemic peak. This study examines SARS-CoV-2 transmission among children and staff in schools and early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW).

As lockdown measures to slow the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection begin to ease in the UK, it is important to assess the impact of any changes in policy, including school reopening and broader relaxation of physical distancing measures. This study aims to use an individual-based model to predict the impact of two possible strategies for reopening schools to all students in the UK from September, 2020, in combination with different assumptions about relaxation of physical distancing measures and the scale-up of testing.

This analysis focuses on the following COVID-19-related impacts that could affect the well-being of children: disruption to education, rising unemployment, mental health and safety, and risks to nutrition.

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 paper uses the World Bank’s recently developed Country Tool for Simulating COVID-19 Impacts on Learning and Schooling Outcomes and data from the forthcoming Indonesia Education Service Delivery Indicator Survey to simulate and contextualize the potential impact of COVID-19 school closures on learning outcomes, proficiency levels, enrollments and expected earnings for Indonesian students in primary and secondary school.

This article calls for greater cross-sector collaboration among schools, universities, nonprofits, and other organizations that serve children to help meet the needs that already exist and that will arise as the pandemic continues. It describes the work of ALL4SC at the University of South Carolina, which leverages the university’s resources to support children and teachers.

School closures have been a recommended non-pharmaceutical intervention in pandemic response owing to the potential to reduce transmission of infection between children, school staff and those that they contact. However, given the many roles that schools play in society, closure for any extended period is likely to have additional impacts. Literature reviews of research exploring school closure to date have focused upon epidemiological effects; there is an unmet need for research that considers the multiplicity of potential impacts of school closures.

This article focuses on the physical and emotional toll resulting from school closures and the withdrawal of nonacademic supports that students rely on. The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a spotlight on how important schools are for meeting children's nonacademic needs.

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.

In this study, the possible psychological effects of COVID-19 on children, youth, elderly people and healthcare staff were discussed in the light of theoretical information. In order to minimize negative psychological effects, some recommendations were presented.