170 Million Latin American Students Face a Learning Crisis

On July 23, 2022, the World Bank, in collaboration with UNESCO, published a report entitled Two Years Later: Saving a Generation, which makes “an urgent call to action to mitigate the learning crisis after COVID-19.” In it, they discuss that the Latin American region was already experiencing a learning crisis before the pandemic, but it has worsened since then.

According to the report, one in five sixth-grade students in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) “does not reach the minimum reading comprehension level.” The report estimates that the region could have regressed more than ten years in education. LAC students experienced some of the most extended school closures in the world, worsening the already existing learning crisis. 

Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, the Vice President of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, told UNICEF that “Latin America and the Caribbean face an unprecedented educational crisis that could compromise the future development of our countries. The fact that a large majority of sixth graders may not understand what they read puts a question mark over the future well-being of millions of children who have not yet developed critical foundational competencies, raising the risk of further deepening long-standing inequalities in the region.”

To complement this comment, Jean Gough, UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, stated that “Latin America and the Caribbean have already lost more than ten years of progress in learning because of the two years of school closures during COVID-19. And this educational catastrophe marches on, day after day.” She adds that “while most schools in the region have reopened, we see that too many children have not been able to return to school full-time, and many of those who have returned are lost. In both cases, they are not learning. Disregarding the most severe educational crisis the region has ever faced will hurt today’s youth and all of us in the long run.”

Another report published on the same day, July 23, 2022, entitled The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update, revealed that this educational crisis in LAC places it second worst in the world, below Sub-Saharan Africa. Worse, the region shows the steepest increase in deterioration since 2019. 

About 17 million children and adolescents were deprived of face-to-face education for approximately one out of every two effective school days to date, according to the report. This puts them at risk of dropping out of school due to academic lag. The report mentions that reading, writing, and mathematics at the primary school level “would fall to levels similar to those more than ten years ago when improvements were already prolonged.”

To ensure the continuity of educational services, LAC governments combined different distance learning strategies during the pandemic’s school closures. Most chose to develop online platforms; television was the second most utilized media. They also used radio, social media, text messages, or printed materials. 

Despite their efforts, many regional limitations thwarted the effectiveness of remote teachings, such as the connectivity gap, limited access to devices, the lack of teacher preparation for distance education, the complications of implementing different learning strategies, and the various institutional limitations.

Because little time has passed since the pandemic ended, evidence of its impact is scanty. Still, school attendance is known to have taken a big hit. Before the arrival of COVID-19, the out-of-school population (NEP) was decreasing, but by the end of 2021, it had a slight increase. However, this population has to be continuously targeted because factors such as slow economic recovery, mental health impact, and learning loss may increase that number.

The reality is that even before the school closures, LAC was already going through a learning crisis. According to the results of the 2019 Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE), the average student in the region already had problems with literacy and numeracy skills. Half of third graders, for example, were already below the required level in math and language. However, in three years, 69% of students would be below average in reading and 83% in mathematics. 

The World Bank and UNICEF report had simulations with data on the duration of closures of classrooms to date and predictions of significant learning losses for the region, something recently confirmed by evidence. Updated estimates using different assumptions about the extent of the partial lockdown and the effectiveness of distance education reveal a loss of between 1 and 1.8 adjusted learning school years, with a loss of 1.5 in an intermediate scenario. Besides learning losses, the students would experience a significant decrease in lifetime income and productivity of about 12%.

The publication exhibited different scenarios, such as the average ERCE scores, which may fall about 45 points, representing a decline of 6.5% in degrees and subjects. These possible results were compared with the math and reading scores of 2013, concluding that the levels would be similar, i.e., a learning loss of more than ten years. 

The report says that “the proportion of third and sixth graders who cannot adequately understand and interpret a moderately long text is expected to increase, on average, from 37 to 50% and 62 to 82%, respectively. Also, the increase in learning poverty is the highest globally.” Learning poverty is estimated to have grown from 52% to 79% in 2022 due to the pandemic. 

Data is scarce, yet estimates are that in the lower grades, young children in the lower socioeconomic status have been disproportionately affected by learning losses, which would create greater inequity. Data from Mexico show one of the steepest declines for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, with losses of 32% in math, compared to 25% for those in higher economic strata.  

In the report, the World Bank Group (WBG), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in partnership with the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), call for urgent and sustained action, because “an entire generation can suffer profound and lasting consequences on its accumulation of human capital. The primary recommendation is clear: recovery should focus on two main strategies: returning to schooling and recovering from learning losses.”

To ensure that students learn and recover from learning losses once they return to school and take steps to compensate for those losses and accelerate recovery, educators must focus not only on the subjects but also on psychosocial challenges and digital divides.  

The WBG, IAD, UNESCO, and UNICEF propose four commitments for learning recovery: 

1. A commitment to schooling – to ensure that no pupil is left behind or drops out.
2. A commitment to learning and well-being – prioritizing basic skills and fostering appropriate levels of human capital formation throughout the process. 
3. A commitment to teachers – to ensure that teachers are valued and supported at all times.
4. A commitment to advocacy and funding – insofar as the education recovery agenda is everyone’s responsibility and needs sufficient, wisely used resources for its implementation.

The reopening of schools is not enough to ensure the recovery of lost learning. Efforts are needed to ensure student attendance and prevent current and future disconnections from schooling. Countries should leverage, improve, and expand existing practices and programs to create better lessons, building on their efforts during the pandemic. They should develop curricula that promote fundamental and transferable competencies with assessment measures.

COVID-19 was an opportunity to prioritize those competencies and find ways to increase them so students can rely on them throughout their lives. The report says: “Learning assessments must be urgently reprioritized, focusing on formative evaluations. Follow-up assessment initiatives everywhere must be strengthened to diagnose current student levels, including recent losses.” Standardized assessments do not need to be forgotten. However, educators must also measure fundamental and transferable competencies, perform diagnostic evaluations of psychosocial health and well-being, and design strategies to address the results. 

For the region to truly improve and for students to recover from learning loss, it is necessary to support teachers throughout this recovery effort. In addition to expanding assessments and generating programs, a sufficient number of educators and support for their professional development are required, starting with reinforcing their digital skills to improve in using technologies and know how to support their students’ psychosocial needs. 

Nearly 170 million LAC students risk significant economic and social damage due to the learning loss crisis. It is estimated that those aged 6 to 14 were the most affected, but all are at risk of erasing decades of improvement. The current status is only the tip of the iceberg. We must see how students progress in the coming years and what new information emerges.

So far, the simulations show “a large increase in the proportion of third and sixth graders who are not able to adequately understand and interpret a moderately lengthy text.” However, this has not translated into effective regional engagement and response. 

The recovery and acceleration of learning must be the priority. Strategies and actions must consider the region’s inequalities and support solution proposals. The report concludes, “The objective is simple: We must prevent the exogenous shock suffered by the 170 million students in the LAC region who have experienced real educational confusion from becoming an educational tragedy with a lifelong disadvantage of human capital.”

Translation by Daniel Wetta

Paulette Delgado

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0