COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the lives of young children, students, and youth. The disruption of societies and economies caused by the pandemic is aggravating the pre-existing global education crisis and is impacting education in unprecedented ways.

Even before COVID-19 hit, the world was experiencing a learning crisis. 258 million children of primary- and secondary-school age were out of school, and the Learning Poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 53 percent – meaning that over half of all 10-year-old children could not read and understand a simple text. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the figure was closer to 90 percent.

At the peak of school closures in April 2020, 94 percent of students – or 1.6 billion children – were out of school worldwide, and, still, around 700 million students today are studying from home, in a context of huge uncertainty and with families and schools having to navigate across options of hybrid and remote learning, or no schooling at all.  In the vast majority of countries, there is no end in sight to this uncertainty.  Early evidence from several high-income countries has already revealed learning losses and increases in inequality.