Contents:
children out of school in 27 closed countries today.
children in 39 partially open countries today.
days of disrupted learning in closed schools since February 2020.
Choose a country to see detailed information:
11 March 2020: The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a COVID-19 pandemic.
84% of countries closed (fully or partially) their school systems by 31st March 2020.
Policy makers lacked practical knowledge and evidence about COVID-19 or experience of managing a pandemic. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was in short supply, medical systems had inadequate capacity, and testing was insufficient to understand the true level of infection.
37% of countries closed proactively when the total infection level was still below 0.1 in every 100,000 of population. School closures spread much more rapidly than the virus itself.
Some countries have never fully closed their schools, utilising instead regional or partial closures. These include Australia, Belarus, Burundi, Iceland, Nicaragua, Russian Federation, Seychelles, Tajikistan, and United States.
So far, 86 countries that have reopened have stayed open, avoiding any second national closures.
But, 32 countries have implemented additional closures after attempting to reopen fully or partially:
While school closure was a global event, the impact has not been equally felt.
The averages conceal significant variation between the number of days out of school experienced by children in different countries.
Countries with the highest disruption:
Country Days
closedIncome Panama 295 High income El Salvador 272 Lower middle income Bolivia 270 Lower middle income Costa Rica 263 Upper middle income Sudan 259 Lower middle income Iraq 254 Upper middle income Guatemala 240 Upper middle income Myanmar 239 Lower middle income Ecuador 236 Upper middle income Kuwait 236 High income
Countries with the least disruption:
Country Days
closedIncome Sweden 13 High income Madagascar 18 Low income New Zealand 18 High income Japan 24 High income Uruguay 26 High income Singapore 27 High income Benin 29 Low income Denmark 33 High income Germany 33 High income Norway 34 High income
Insights for Education has built up a picture of some of the key policy responses that are supporting reopening decisions. These include:
It appears that these (and potentially other) changes may be assisting school systems to remain open at much higher levels of infection than was tolerated when they first closed.
Epidemiologists predict that countries will experience multiple waves of COVID-19 infection.
97 countries have experienced multiple waves and, unlike in the first wave, many countries have kept their school systems open.
(Note: sometimes, the greater size of secondary waves makes the first wave invisible on the scale of these charts.)
Many of the countries still experiencing a first wave of infection were among the first to close back in March, acting proactively.
179 days is the average closure period for these countries. It is increasing every day.
21 countries are in a first wave and either closed or only partially open.
47% of these countries are lower middle or low income and collectively they are responsible for the education of 706.9 million students.
15 of these countries have more than 10% of their schools lacking basic water facilities. Hand washing is harder without clean running water.
28:1 is their average student to teacher ratio, compared with 13:1 in high income countries. Larger classes and fewer teachers make it harder to open safely.
Our work does not attempt to establish correlation or causality between school status and COVID-19 infection levels. The three examples below have been chosen to illustrate the complexity in making simplistic assumptions about the impact of school closure and opening on virus progression.
What we have observed is many different patterns, most probably reflecting multiple factors including state of economic activity, testing, tracing, and health system capacity. Schools are just one aspect of the policy response to managing COVID-19. School closures have implications for wider society and vice versa.
The Gambia saw continued decline once schools opened after a vacation:
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
France experienced growth in infections while schools were closed during scheduled vacations:
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
And Finland saw little change in infection levels during vacation, followed by a rise after schools reopened:
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
Slowly but steadily, education systems are learning how to live with COVID-19. But the story is far from complete. The numbers in this infographic are updated daily. Check-back again in future weeks as we add more to this evolving storyline.
Rigorous and careful monitoring of experiences from all countries – those who have reopened once or more, and those that remain closed – offer a deeply valuable and growing fact base in which to anchor future decisions.
Insights for Education is a non-profit independent foundation founded in 2019 working to advance evidence and improve education for every child.
Our mission is to build resources for education leaders to reach each child, by synthesising and translating an inclusive range of evidence. We aim to be benevolent disruptors and bridge-builders in the education system.
More information on this work can be found in our FAQ. We welcome feedback, suggestions and corrections. Please use our contact form.
©
2021
Insights for Education
Data as of 17 January 2021.
Notes:
