UNESCO: The Corona pandemic has caused the largest educational disruption in history
Ozilai said in a statement to Kuwait’s KUNA agency that the global wave of closures that swept schools and universities affected the majority of students and led to a dangerous exacerbation of inequalities in education and radical transformations that affected entire educational systems around the world, warning that closing schools and universities for long periods leads to exacerbating learning losses.
Ozilai indicated the need to keep schools open or reopen them as soon as possible, taking into account full compliance with health rules, pointing out that the UNESCO Global Education Alliance is working to ensure the continuation of education by all means, including distance education, although it cannot replace education inside schools.
She noted that when the pandemic reached its peak in the spring of 2020, about 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries were out of school, accounting for 90 percent of the total number of students in the world.
Ozilai added that a year after the outbreak of the pandemic, there are still more than 800 million students facing major disruptions in their education, between a complete closure or a reduction in the number of school hours, warning that the crisis may lead to an increase in the annual funding gap allocated to education in the poorest countries to reach $ 200 billion annually.
K.Q.