Nineteen months after the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures worldwide, only half of the schools across the globe have resumed classroom teaching and learning while around 34 per cent of schools are relying on mixed or hybrid instruction mode, according to the COVID-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker.
The tracker has been jointly created by Johns Hopkins University, the World Bank, and UNICEF to assist countries’ decision-making by tracking reopening and COVID-19 recovery planning efforts in more than 200 countries.
According to the tracked data, 80 per cent of schools worldwide are in regular sessions. Out of those, 54 per cent are back to in-person instruction, 34 per cent are relying on mixed or hybrid instruction while 10 per cent continue remote instruction and 2 per cent offer no instruction at all.
While the tracker noted that only 53 per cent of countries are prioritising vaccinating teachers, the World Bank has recommended that countries should no longer wait to get their population or school staff fully vaccinated before reopening schools.
“To promote education recovery, teachers should be prioritized for vaccination where possible, while recognising that there are ways to reopen safely without vaccination through adequate safety measures,” said a report by the World Bank’s Education team.
In countries with higher hospitalisation rates prior to school reopenings, study results were inconclusive on whether reopenings generated an increase in COVID-related hospitalisations.
“Another study exploited differences in start and end dates for summer and fall holidays across Germany and found that neither summer nor fall closures had any meaningful containing effect on the transmission of the virus among children or any significant spill-over effect on adults.
“Similarly, other studies support the argument that transmission in schools usually follows trends in community transmission, rather than preceding or increasing them,” it added.
