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How Africa Can Reform Education Amid Covid-19 School Closures

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a historic shock to education, shuttering schools for over 1.6 billion children worldwide. This shock will worsen a pre-existing "learning crisis" in which many learners were learning very little. The World Bank estimates that the percentage of children who are unable to read a simple sentence by age 10 could rise from 53% before the pandemic to 63% as a result of school closures.

These learning losses could stem from a combination of things - forgetting what was previously known, and missing what would have been learned if schools had not been closed. These learning losses can accumulate in the long run. Students who re-enter school far behind the curriculum expectations might be too far behind to learn anything from daily instruction and fall even further behind.

While Covid-19 has held back learning, bold reform is possible and the pandemic presents a historic opportunity to revamp education systems. It could be a time to institute practices and policies that have been needed to address the underlying learning crisis for decades, writes Noam Angrist for The Conversation.

InFocus

David Lubowa/Daily Monitor

Ugandan students report to school (file photo).

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