The corona pandemic is having an even worse impact than previously expected on children's education around the world.
Even 21 months after the outbreak of the pandemic, schools remained closed to millions of children, the World Bank criticized in a report published on Monday.
“Some may never go to school again.” This “learning loss” for many children “is morally unacceptable”.
As a concrete consequence of the pandemic, the proportion of children who are not able to read and understand a simple text by the age of ten could rise to almost 70 percent, according to the World Bank.
Previously, due to poor educational opportunities in many countries, this proportion was around 50 percent.
The financial experts of the multinational development bank assume that the children affected by school closings today will lose around 17 trillion dollars in the course of their lives as a result.
Last year the World Bank had put these expected financial losses at ten trillion dollars.
Education losers of the pandemic
Studies by the World Bank also showed that poorer and handicapped children are much more affected by missed lessons.
On average, they were offered the opportunity to switch to distance learning significantly less often.
Girls are also generally among the biggest losers in education because of the pandemic.
Governments around the world have taken trillion dollar economic stimulus measures to protect their economies from the Corona crisis.
But less than three percent of these funds were put into education, laments the World Bank.
According to this, over 200 million school children live in countries that do not have the means to make up for the lack of face-to-face teaching with distance learning.