COVID-19: 72m Children Risk Not Being Able to Read At Age 10 – World Bank Report

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LAGOS – A World Bank report has in­dicated that COVID-related school closures risk pushing an additional 72 million pri­mary school-aged children into learning poverty.

According to the two fresh reports by the World Bank, the implications are that affected children will be unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 as it outlined a new vision for learning and the in­vestments and policies, includ­ing on education technology, that countries can implement today to realize this vision.

The global organization said the pandemic is amplify­ing the global learning crisis that already existed, saying it could increase the percent­age of primary-school-age children in low- and mid­dle-income countries living in learning poverty to 63 per cent from 53 per cent, and it puts this generation of students at risk of losing about $10 trillion in future lifetime earnings, an amount equivalent to almost 10 per cent of global GDP.

The new report tagged: “Re­alizing the Future of Learn­ing: From Learning Poverty to Learning for Everyone, Ev­erywhere”, lays out a vision for the future of learning that can guide countries today in their investments and policy reforms.

It said the vision was to en­able more countries to build more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems and ensure that all children learn with joy, rigour and pur­pose in school and beyond the school walls.

World Bank in the ac­companying report titled: “Reimagining Human Con­nections: Technology and In­novation at the World Bank”, presents the World Bank’s new approach to guide invest­ments in education technol­ogy, so that technology can truly serve as a tool to make education systems more re­silient to catastrophic shocks like COVID-19 and help in re­imagining the way education is delivered.

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