A global report by the World Bank released last Thursday, February 16, shows one of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on education. According to the text, children aged 0 to 5 years suffered a loss of cognitive deficit during this period and, therefore, may suffer from gains in the future.
According to the report, this loss can result in a 25% drop in income they would have as adults. The document also points out that school-age children, aged 6 to 14, and young people aged 15 to 24 were also affected by the health crisis.
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In an interview with the television network CNN, the World Bank economist and one of the authors of the report, Joana Silva, pointed out that children aged 0 to 5 years experience cognitive loss the most because the first five years of life are crucial for the development of the brain.
According to her, it is in this phase that the foundation is established for skills such as literacy and mathematics, in addition to developing executive functions and socio-emotional skills. Losses of human capital at this stage can result in an obstacle to the accumulation of human capital in later stages of life.
Impacts of the pandemic on education
Furthermore, the World Bank report calculates that school-aged children may lose up to 10% of their future earnings due to impacts on education caused by pandemic. With the closure of schools, children stopped learning and forgot things they had already studied, even taking remote classes.
It is estimated that for every 30 days of school closures, on average, students lost 32 days of learning. These education losses could result in a reduction of future earnings worldwide by up to $21 trillion.
Solutions
Still according to Joana, there are some solutions to minimize the problems caused by the loss of human capital during the lives of these children. One of them would be for governments to prioritize social income transfer programs for families with young children, especially those whose income has not been recovered.
In addition, she advocates promoting campaigns to update the vaccination portfolio and nutritional supplementation. And finally, programs to encourage greater cognitive stimulation and socioemotional in homes.
For school-age children, it will be important to adapt teaching to the learning level of students who have lost classes, increase class time, and make-up programs, such as make-up classes, for students with higher losses.
Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.