Millions still not back at school

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The World Bank says this could cost the global economy $17 trillion. Coronavirus brought education systems across the world to a halt. At its height more than ninety percent of the globally enrolled student body were not in school. That’s more than 1.6 billion learners. Nearly two years on from the start of the pandemic, hundreds of millions of children are still not back in the classroom. In Uganda, as the BBC’s Patience Atuhaire tells us, schools were closed in March 2020 before the country registered a single coronavirus case. They are yet to reopen. She interviews a father whose twelve children have missed nearly two years of school. Robert Jenkins, the Director of Education and Adolescent Development at UNICEF, says the global economic impact of this lost education amounts to $17 trillion. He says the need for governments around the world to reopen all schools is critical.

(picture of Fred Ssegawa's children via BBC).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. In Uganda, schools have been
0:08.3	shut for nearly two years and there's a real fear millions of children may never go back.
0:14.8	It's been devastating in several ways because about 30% of the 15 million children who went home in March 2020
0:23.8	may never be able to return to school at home.
0:26.8	And Uganda is not alone.
0:28.7	Globally, hundreds of millions of children are still not back at school and the economic
0:34.0	ramifications are staggering.
0:36.7	The estimate currently from the World Bank is $17 trillion impact in terms of lost income globally due to the disruption COVID-19 has had on education.
0:49.2	In today's Business Daily from the BBC, we take a look at our children's lost education and what this means
0:56.9	economically.
1:01.7	I grow some crops like beans, cassava, some maize even, just for home use.
1:13.9	This is 49-year-old Ugandan, Fred Sigawa. He was a teacher. But since March last year,
1:20.8	when all schools in the country closed, he lost his job. He now farms on his land in Luero,
1:27.3	a three-hour drive north of the capital, Campala.
1:30.7	All 12 of his children are out of school.
1:34.3	I feel so bad because I'm a teacher.
1:39.9	I studied my parents, Manning, to take me to the school. Then I studied my parents money to take me to the school then I studied they are missing many things
1:51.0	when you are not educated meaning you have no future many people who are educated they are living a good a good life here. So they are missing a lot.
2:04.4	And even I'm worried because in my life, what I wanted, at least all my children to complete
2:13.4	all over at least. But now I don't think that it will be possible.
2:20.6	It's been nearly two years since any of Fred's children have been to school.
2:25.5	His two youngest have never set foot in a classroom.
	...

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