Learning Losses during COVID-19 : Global Estimates of an Invisible and Unequal Crisis

This paper presents updated simulation results of the potential effects ofCOVID-19-related school closures on learning outcomes globally. The simulation, which updates and extends priorwork by Azevedo, Hasan et al. (2021) and Azevedo (2020), examines potential learning losses as the pandemic movesinto the third year. Beyond reflecting the longer duration of the crisis, the paper extends prior work by usingcountry-specific observed school closure information, accounts for the partial reopening of some educationsystems, updates the baseline Learning Poverty estimates to reflect its best estimate to date just before the pandemic(circa 2019), and uses updated June 2021 macroeconomic projections to reflect the economic magnitude of the crisis.The analysis finds that the overall learning levels are likely to fall substantially around the world. Under an“intermediate” scenario, school closures could potentially increase the share of children in Learning Poverty in low-and middle-income countries by 13 percentage points, to 70 percent. Globally, learning adjusted years of schoolingcould fall by 1.1 years, and the share of youth below minimum proficiency on the Programme for InternationalStudent Assessment could rise by 12.3 percentage points. Furthermore, school shutdowns could generate lifetimeearning losses of $21 trillion. These results imply that decisive action is needed to recover and accelerate learning.