WASHINGTON CITY, February 16, 2023: The COVID-19 pandemic has derailed progress and led to a huge drop in the human capital of millions of young people and youth in South Asia, according to a new World Bank knowledge study on people under 25 in the future. beginning of the pandemic.
The human capital, knowledge, skills and fitness that other people accumulate over their lifetime is key to unlocking a child’s future and enabling countries to achieve resilient recovery and strong long-term growth. However, the pandemic has closed schools and workplaces and disrupted the key to protecting and promoting human capital, such as health care and skills training.
The new report, Collapse and Recovery: How COVID Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It, presents the first comprehensive research of global knowledge on the effects of the pandemic on other young people at key stages of development: early formative years (0-5 years), school age (6-14 years) and young people (15-24 years). It finds that in South Asia, today’s academics may lose up to 14. 4% of their long-term gains due to COVID-19-induced education. Shocks. The cognitive decline of today’s young children can result in a 25% drop in source of income when those children are adults.
“The pandemic has closed schools, decimated jobs, and plunged vulnerable families into crisis, derailing millions of South Asian youth and youth and denying them opportunities to thrive,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank Vice President for South Asia. “Action is imperative to recoup human capital losses and examples from the region show that this is conceivable at a relatively low cost if governments act quickly. “
In South Asia, between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2022, schools were fully or partially closed 83% of the time, much longer than the global average of schools closed during 52% of the same period. Among school-age children, on average, for every 30 days of school closure, students missed about 32 days of learning. In fact, school closures and useless distance learning measures caused students to lose learning and also what they had already learned. As a result, learning poverty: already 60% before the pandemic, has increased even more, with an estimated 78% of 10-year-olds in South Asia unable to read or perceive an undeniable written text.
The report reveals that in Bangladesh, only about 15 months of school closures resulted in a loss of approximately 26 months of learning. Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu, India, academics showed serious deficits in reading and math when they returned to face-to-face learning. In Pakistan, compared to expected pre-pandemic learning levels, young people from poorer families lagged further behind in mathematics during the pandemic compared to young people from richer families. In addition, in the region, significant decreases were observed in the cognitive and socio-emotional development areas. In Bangladesh, for example, young children assessed in 2022 lagged far behind young children assessed in 2019.
In some South Asian countries covered by the report, enrollment has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Preschool enrolment as of the end of 2021 had declined by more than 15 percentage points in Pakistan. percentage problems once schools reopened, and only 7. 6 million young people in Pakistan dropped out of school.
In South Asia, the number of others who were not hired or enrolled in school or education increased significantly. In addition, in several countries analyzed, there were few symptoms of recovery after 18 months.
The window for dealing with setbacks in human capital accumulation is small, as gaps in early life tend to widen over time. Without urgent action, the pandemic also threatens to exacerbate poverty and inequality. This report highlights evidence-based policy functions to compensate for existing losses and avoid long-term losses. It also provides a technique to help countries prioritize other policy functions to emerge from the crisis.
In the short term, for young children, countries deserve targeted immunization campaigns and nutritional supplements; strengthen access to pre-primary education, adding socio-emotional skills; and expanding the policy of moving money to vulnerable families. For school-age children, governments will have to keep schools open and increase instructional time; assess learning and adapt training to students’ level of learning; and streamlining the curriculum to focus on fundamental learning. For young people, for adapted training, entrepreneurship systems and new workforce projects are crucial.
Programs that have been expanded before and after the pandemic show how early education systems can help young people learn new skills and not be informed of losses. Recent evidence suggests that even simple and cheap systems can lead to significant skill gains. In Bangladesh, for example, attendance at another year of pre-primary education through two-hour sessions particularly improved scores in literacy, numeracy and social development. Meanwhile, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, another six months of after-school recovery categories helped students compensate for about two-thirds of the loss of consciousness similar to eighteen months of school closures.
In the longer term, countries want to build agile, resilient and adaptable health, education and social coverage systems that can better prepare for and respond to existing and long-term crises.
The World Bank is working hard with South Asian governments to protect and invest in others as they cope with and recover from the pandemic. 2020 – April 2022), adding $2. 7 billion that have covered social safety nets benefiting more than 857 million vulnerable people. $2500 million for 15 fitness projects, $2800 million for 12 school projects, and over $1 billion for vaccine procurement and deployment.
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