Contents:
children out of school in 17 closed countries today.
children in 55 partially open countries today.
closed days of school since January 2020.
CLICK ON A MAP 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.
40% 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, Nauru, Nicaragua, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and United States.
So far, 68 countries that have reopened have stayed open, avoiding any second national closures.
But, 95 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.
Global averages conceal significant variation between the number of days out of school experienced by children in different countries.
Countries with the highest disruption:
Country Income Closed days Panama High income 408
Mexico Upper middle income 389
Myanmar Lower middle income 384
Bangladesh Lower middle income 381
Kuwait High income 358
Saudi Arabia High income 354
Venezuela, RB Upper middle income 353
Iraq Upper middle income 346
Honduras Lower middle income 344
Jordan Upper middle income 324
El Salvador Lower middle income 320
Philippines Lower middle income 313
Ecuador Upper middle income 297
Bolivia Lower middle income 270
Costa Rica Upper middle income 270
Countries with the least disruption:
Country Income Closed days Sweden High income 14
New Zealand High income 18
Japan High income 24
Benin Low income 29
Norway High income 34
Vietnam Lower middle income 34
Singapore High income 39
Madagascar Low income 41
Switzerland High income 41
Papua New Guinea Lower middle income 42
Cote d'Ivoire Lower middle income 46
Botswana Upper middle income 48
Germany High income 54
Denmark High income 55
Zambia Lower middle income 55
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.
126 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.)
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.
Switzerland saw declining levels of new infections while keeping schools open:
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
Costa Rica saw infection levels rise and fall again while schools were closed or on vacation. Recently,
they have risen sharply while schools are partially open.
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
And Ghana saw infection levels rise then fall again as schools fully reopened:
School status: █ Open █ Partially open █ Closed █ Vacation █ Unknown
After many months and multiple waves, a sub-analysis of 110 countries shows that a trade-off between keeping schools open, protecting health, and protecting the economy is not inevitable. 8 countries have shown that it is possible to balance all three policy goals.
Countries faring better, especially those with least learning disruption, opened as the first wave of infection ended and prior to the second starting. Typically, there was clear political prioritisation and broad community engagement for getting children back to school.
The greatest number of days of disrupted learning has been seen in countries experiencing prolonged waves of infection, or waves building on top of one another. Sometimes, these same countries prioritised the economy over education and/or suffered from weak community support for returning to school.
While it is surely not yet possible to declare certain choices “right” or “wrong”, studying these patterns are essential for providing policy leaders with the best available information for deliberations around choices and trade-offs.
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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 an independent non-profit foundation working to advance evidence and improve education for every child. Its mission is to build resources for education leaders by synthesising and translating an inclusive range of evidence, and to enable these resources to be used by those who make education happen by building bridges across knowledge actors, policy makers and practitioners.
Established in 2019 and registered in Zurich, Switzerland, the foundation is supported by a visionary co-investor collective and is growing partnerships across governments, agencies, NGOs, universities, businesses and foundations in Africa, Middle East, Europe, and North America.
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 21 June 2021.
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