Education | WPN World People News

“As we enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as cases continue to soar around the world, no effort should be spared to keep schools open or prioritize them in reopening plans.

COVID-related school closures risk pushing an additional 72 million primary school aged children into learning poverty—meaning that they are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10—according to two new World Bank reports released on December 2th. The reports outline a new vision for learning and the investments and policies, including on education technology, that countries can implement to realize this vision.

Schoolchildren in low-and lower-middle-income countries have already lost nearly four months of schooling since the start of the pandemic, compared to six weeks of loss in high-income countries, according to a new report published by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank, on October 28.

The Child Resilience and Protection Project, a new US$5 million project funded by the Sint Maarten Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience Trust Fund, has been approved. The Trust Fund is financed by the Government of the Netherlands and managed by the World Bank. The project was developed under the leadership of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport (MECYS) and will be implemented by UNICEF the Netherlands.

Schools and education systems are failing to give boys and girls across the world the same opportunities to learn and apply their knowledge of global and multicultural issues, according to a new report on the first OECD PISA assessment of the knowledge, skills and attitudes of students to engage with other people and cultures.

This World Teachers’ Day, celebrated under the theme, “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future”, the Global Partnership for Education, Education Cannot Wait, UNESCO and UNICEF are calling for the resumption of salary payments for around half of the Yemeni teachers and school-based staff (estimated 160,000) who have not received regular salary payments since 2016. With suspended salary payments and schools regularly coming under attack, many teachers have been forced to find alternative sources of income to provide for their families.

A teacher and her students practice COVID-19 school re-opening guidelines by wearing face masks and maintaining physical distance at a primary school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

With only three per cent of refugees accessing higher education, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is urging governments and donors to help bridge critical gaps by ensuring the inclusion of refugee students in national education systems and the continuity of tertiary education programs, as well as offering more places for refugees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closures across the world and forced teachers and students in many countries to adapt quickly to teaching and learning online. But a new OECD PISA report reveals wide disparities both between and within countries in the availability of technology in schools and of teachers’ capacities to use ICT effectively.

Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), and Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), presented recommendations on measures to make sure that schools are safe despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in a joint online press conference on Sept 15.