All is not lost. If governments act with urgency, they can reverse the worst of these impacts. First and foremost, governments must protect education financing to ensure that learning is not lost. And governments must develop a plan for distance learning, remedial education, and to get students back into schools when they reopen.
Today is the Day of the African Child. While we now celebrate this day to defend the rights of Africa’s children, its origins are often forgotten. 44 years ago today, 10,000 black school children risked their lives to protest the poor quality of education in Soweto, South Africa. They stretched nearly half a mile long. Many of them were injured or killed in the ensuing security clamp down.
In the nearly half century since, there has been some progress in terms of education. More children are in school than ever before at all levels, and they’re also staying in school for longer.
But this is not enough. 87 per cent of sub-Saharan African children cannot read and understand a simple sentence at age 10. In Nigeria, although children are in school for an average of 8.2 years, they are only receiving learning equivalent to that of a Primary 4 level.
This should not be taken lightly. At age 10, children should be switching from learning to read to reading to learn. Not doing so impedes not just their entire learning trajectory, but also the rest of their lives and the future of entire economies. After all, the children of today are the doctors and public health experts of tomorrow.
Schools will have to be prepared to make up for the learning loss, which includes the time students have been out of school, and factoring in the impact several years down the line. Gaps in knowledge today accumulate over time; a recent study found that just three months of lost learning can add up to over one-and-a-half years of schooling loss six years later.
COVID-19 will make this situation much worse. When schools do reopen – as many across the world are starting to – fewer children, particularly from the poorest households, will walk through the doors, threatening to undo decades of progress in educational access. With 70-100 million more people expected to be pushed into extreme poverty, the cost of school fees, books, and other educational materials to send children to school is much too high, especially as the poorest families struggle to eat.
The children that do re-enter will find their schools underprepared to safeguard them from the pandemic, particularly in the poorest communities. Classroom sizes in low-income countries are two-and-a-half times that of the number in high-income countries, so social distancing will be exceedingly difficult. And basic sanitation facilities are woefully inadequate.
What’s more, these children will have missed out on months of learning. Although some governments have tried to implement distance learning solutions, nearly half of sub-Saharan African countries have no remote learning in place. Educational technology is a pipe dream for the poorest children: In Nigeria, just 42 per cent of people have access to the Internet.
Schools will have to be prepared to make up for the learning loss, which includes the time students have been out of school, and factoring in the impact several years down the line. Gaps in knowledge today accumulate over time; a recent study found that just three months of lost learning can add up to over one-and-a-half years of schooling loss six years later.
There is a famous Yoruba saying: If a child falls, he looks forward to the future. But if an adult falls, he looks backwards. Let’s look to our past and remember why so many Soweto children sacrificed their lives. And let’s give our children a future to look forward to.
If done right, education financing can help. But as we enter the worst recession since World War II, economies the world over are bound to contract. This means less money for education from governments and from international aid. Already, Nigeria is talking about cutting the budget to the Universal Basic Education Commission nearly by half. Aid is likely to shrink by up to US$12 billion. And as households lose income from the combination of job losses and falling remittances – which, in Nigeria, are the size of the federal government budget, parents will be less able to afford to send their children to school.
All is not lost. If governments act with urgency, they can reverse the worst of these impacts. First and foremost, governments must protect education financing to ensure that learning is not lost. And governments must develop a plan for distance learning, remedial education, and to get students back into schools when they reopen. They can turn to countries like Sierra Leone, who are implementing radio programming, physically delivering educational materials and building mobile phone solutions. Or Liberia, who, after the Ebola pandemic between 2014 and 2016, held an active radio campaign to encourage students to return to school, gave grants to schools, delivered textbooks, and invested in hygiene packages and learning kits. If done right, these efforts will last not just for this generation, but will improve education systems for all future generations.
There is a famous Yoruba saying: If a child falls, he looks forward to the future. But if an adult falls, he looks backwards. Let’s look to our past and remember why so many Soweto children sacrificed their lives. And let’s give our children a future to look forward to.
Edwin Ikhuoria is the Africa Executive Director of ONE, a campaigning and advocacy organisation of over 9 million people taking action to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.
