Covid learning loss has been a global disaster
Millions of children are still out of school. The costs are stacking up
King norvic tarroyo lives with his parents and five siblings in a slum near the sea wall in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The eight-year-old has not set foot in a school since March 2020, when classrooms closed as a precaution against covid-19. Twenty-seven months later his school, like thousands of others across the country, remains shut. A year ago teachers gave him a tablet computer for remote learning. But his mother says he uses it for only a few hours each day. After that, he pretends to snooze or scampers into alleys near his home. His mum sometimes does his schoolwork for him.
The Philippines’ response to covid-19 has been terrible for its children. For the first seven months of the pandemic the country’s 27m pupils received no classes of any kind. For more than a year children in much of the Philippines were not even supposed to leave their homes. Since the start of 2022 about 80% of government schools have been granted permission to restart some limited face-to-face lessons. But not all of them have chosen to do so. Perhaps two-thirds of children have not yet been invited back to school at all.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Millions of wasted minds"
More from International
Beware, global jihadists are back on the march
They are using the war in Gaza to radicalise a new generation
The tech wars are about to enter a fiery new phase
America, China and the battle for supremacy
Would you really die for your country?
Military conscription is on the agenda in the rich world