2 policy brief: education during covid-19 and beyond executive summary

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The economic 
23 World Bank, “We should avoid flattening the curve in education – Possible scenarios for learn-
ing loss during the school lockdowns”, 13 April 2020, available at https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/
we-should-avoid-flattening-curve-education-possible-scenarios-learning-loss-during-school.
24 World Bank, “Simulating the Potential Impacts of the COVID-19 School Closures on Schooling and Learning Outcomes: 
A set of Global Estimates”, 18 June 2020, available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/publication/
simulating-potential-impacts-of-covid-19-school-closures-learning-outcomes-a-set-of-global-estimates.
25 Michelle Kaffenberger, “Modeling the long-run learning impact of the COVID-19 learning shock: Actions to (more than) mitigate loss”,
RISE Insight Series. 2020/017, 4 June 2020, available at https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-RI_2020/017. 
26 World Bank, “COVID-19 Could Lead to Permanent Loss in Learning and Trillions of Dollars in Lost 
Earnings” , 18 June 2020, available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/06/18/
covid-19-could-lead-to-permanent-loss-in-learning-and-trillions-of-dollars-in-lost-earnings.
loss might reach $16,000 of lost earnings 
over a student’s lifetime, translating over time 
into $10 trillion of lost earnings globally.
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INCREASED DROPOUT 
ANTICIPATED
In addition to the learning loss, the economic 
impact on households is likely to widen the 
inequities in education achievement. Should 
millions be pushed into severe poverty, empirical 
evidence shows that children from households 
in the poorest quintiles are significantly less 
likely to complete primary and lower secondary 
education than those in the richest quintile; 
this divide can be greater than 50 percentage 
points in many sub-Saharan countries, as well 
as in Haiti, Jordan, Nepal, and Pakistan.