In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Latin American and Caribbean region is experiencing an unprecedented education crisis that requires immediate action to mitigate and reverse learning losses, according to a new World Bank report.
Following the massive school closures, as of February 2021, about 120 million school-age children had already lost or were at risk of losing a full academic year of presential education, with serious educational impacts, according to the report, Acting now to protect the human capital of our children: The costs of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the education sector in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Learning poverty, defined as the percentage of 10-year-olds unable to read and understand a simple text, may have grown from 51 percent to 62.5 percent. This could be equivalent to roughly 7.6 million additional “learning poor” primary education school-age children in the region, representing more than a 20% increase of the current estimates.
Follow the story here: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/03/17/hacer-frente-a-la-crisis-educativa-en-america-latina-y-el-caribe