We have written on these posts about some of the challenges and issues from Covid-19 in developing countries. However, according to a recent article in the Telegraph, the situation is in fact worse than previously thought. Recent evidence shows a loss of important skills, lower than usual test scores, and a higher incidence of children dropping out of education entirely. Schools in many of these countries have been closed for far longer than in developed countries and this is predicted to “affect this generation forever”. Evidence from a study in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, points to an entire erosion of gains made in education over the last ten years. Furthermore, there have been numerous suggestions from many publications stating how difficult it has been to learn remotely and the Brazilian study confirms that “students only learned around a quarter remotely of what they would have in person”. Clearly, technology – or lack of – has a role to play in the extent to which learning has, or has not, been effective, but a study in the Netherlands showed that children “effectively learned nothing while not physically present in school”. Sadly, there is no quick fix or a way to show that expenditure on catch-up will improve the situation in the short-term, but ideas need to be put forward to address this issue, and soon, before there is no hope of helping the children´s educational progress.
