Filipino children lost a year, 5 mos with schools closed

FILIPINO children lost a year and five months of learning because of the closure of schools, seriously derailing the buildup of human capital, according to the latest report released by the World Bank.

In the report “Collapse and Recovery: How COVID-19 Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It,” the World Bank said the Philippines closed schools for 510 days or a year and four months.

It estimated that for every 30 days that schools are closed, students lose 32 days of learning. Using this estimate, students in the Philippines lost a total of 544 days of learning.

“The pandemic and school closures threatened to wipe out decades of progress in building human capital. Targeted policies to reverse the losses in foundational learning, health, and skills are critical to avoid jeopardizing the development of multiple generations,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass.

“Countries need to chart a new course for greater human capital investments to help citizens become more resilient to the overlapping threats of health shocks, conflict, slow growth and climate change and also lay a solid foundation for faster, more inclusive growth,” he added.

The World Bank cited three factors that affected students’ learning during the pandemic. The first factor was that remote classes were less effective as a mode of instruction compared to in-person schooling.

Remote learning was less effective because globally, more than two-thirds of children ages 3-17 or 1.3 billion lacked internet access at home. In middle income countries like India, a total of 29 million did not even have access to smartphones, feature phones, television, radio, or computers.

The second factor was that students devoted less time to learning compared to pre-pandemic times as their parents struggled to compensate for the loss in “instructional time with teachers.” In some countries, the time spent learning per day declined by 71 percent or six hours per day compared to the time before school closures.

The last factor was the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of students. The report stated that globally, children reported symptoms of depression, anxiety, or both while others reported

difficulties in concentrating on their studies and schoolwork.

“In low- and middle-income countries, nearly 1 billion children missed out on at least a full year of in-person schooling due to school closures, and more than 700 million missed one and a half years. As a result, learning poverty—already 57 percent before the pandemic—has increased further in these countries, with an estimated 70 percent of 10-year-olds unable to understand a basic written text,” the World Bank said in a statement.

Youth employment

AS the days for learning decreased, the Washington-based lender found, employment and wages for young workers also declined.

The World Bank said the decline in youth employment in the Philippines contracted 11 percentage points to 33 percent in the second quarter of 2020.

Young workers also saw a 20-hour decline in the number of hours they worked to only 19 hours from the 39 hours recorded pre-pandemic. The World Bank said this indicated the poor quality of jobs the youth held during the pandemic.

The World Bank said 40 million people who would have had a job in the absence of the pandemic did not have one at the end of 2021, worsening youth unemployment trends. Youth earnings around the world contracted by 15 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2021.

Owing to the learning losses, the report said new entrants with lower education will have 13 percent less earnings during their first decade in the labor market.

Evidence from Brazil, Ethiopia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam showed that 25 percent of all young people were neither in education, employment nor training in 2021.

“People under the age of 25 today—that is, those most affected by the erosion of human capital—will make up more than 90 percent of the prime-age workforce in 2050,” said Norbert Schady, Chief Economist for Human Development at the World Bank, and a lead author of the report.

“Reversing the pandemic’s impact on them and investing in their future should be a top priority for governments. Otherwise, these cohorts will represent not just a lost generation but rather multiple lost generations,” he added.

Catch up

THE World Bank said addressing setbacks is vital, so with plugging gaps in early stages of the life cycle of children which tend to widen over time. Without urgent action, the pandemic also threatens to deepen poverty and inequality.

In the short term, for young children, the World Bank said countries should support targeted campaigns for vaccinations and nutritional supplementation; increase access to pre-primary education; and expand coverage of cash transfers for vulnerable families.

For school-age children, governments need to keep schools open and increase instructional time; assess learning and match instruction to students’ learning levels; and streamline the curriculum to focus on foundational learning.

For youth, support for adapted training, job intermediation, entrepreneurship programs, and new workforce-oriented initiatives are crucial.

In the longer term, countries need to build agile, resilient, and adaptive health, education, and social protection systems that can better prepare for and respond to current and future shocks.cai