Latin America and the Caribbean countries have reaffirmed their commitment to promote urgent educational recovery in the region after the losses recorded during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and to guarantee basic learning for all children.
The World Bank said authorities in the education field have been meeting here this week to discuss and agree on concrete measures to ensure that all children and adolescents, especially those in vulnerable situations, develop the basic learning skills – reading, writing, mathematics, and socio-emotional skills – that will enable them to develop their full potential, achieve integral participation in society, and the continuity in their learning.
Despite significant efforts by governments, the World Bank said teachers and parents, children have lost, on average, 1.5 years of learning during the pandemic.
“After two years of school closures in the region, learning outcomes could have been set back more than ten years. The youngest and poorest have been hardest hit,” the Washington-based financial institution said.
The World Bank said preliminary evidence from several countries shows greater losses at the primary than at the secondary level and among students at the lowest socioeconomic levels.
“Collective learning losses will hurt Latin America and the Caribbean in the future, exacerbating inequalities and jeopardizing economic growth,” the bank said, that the meeting is part of the initiatives under the commitment to action on basic learning and its recovery, an official mechanism promoted globally by several international organizations including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); United States Agency for International Aid (USAID), the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
“Its purpose is to get governments and the education community to implement actions to ensure, at the highest political level, that all the world’s children achieve basic learning, and complements a regional commitment launched last year to protect and restore learning,” the World Bank said.
CMC/
