The economic cost of closing schools

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The economic costs of school closures amidst the pandemic could be huge. 2 billion school days have been missed so far around the world, and millions more are to come. Experts are warning of a lost generation with many children losing key skills to earn their way out of poverty. Even in the rich world, this cohort could see their future incomes fall considerably. So are governments paying enough attention? Does education have to be the trade off for public health and the economy in the pandemic? We hear from Stefania Giannini Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO who tells us that disadvantaged children will suffer the most, whilst Dr Randa Grob Zakhary, CEO, Insights for Education says that different countries have taken different approaches to education during the pandemic with starkly different results. Nisha Ligon is the co-founder of Ubongo, Africa’s biggest EdTech non-profit, who has had a busy year filling the demand for home learning in African countries with limited access to modern technology. Plus educational economist Eric Hanushek, a fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University has been crunching the numbers on the impact on GDP and personal earnings for the current cohort of school children being locked out of school.

(Image: School gates with closed sign. Credit: Press Association)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:05.7	Coming up, the economic costs of school closures amidst the pandemic.
0:10.4	Two billion school days so far missed, millions more to come.
0:14.9	Not only are the students losing, but the countries are losing,
0:18.6	because this is going to affect the long-run growth of countries.
0:22.9	A massive dent to the world's future GDP, the economists say,
0:27.1	are we truly calculating the price of a lost generation?
0:30.9	Over the last 10 years, the world has made great strides
0:33.5	in bringing children in the most impoverished communities, girls, refugees, many different types
0:39.8	of marginalized students. And now if they miss a year, it's not just for themselves. It's also
0:45.5	will affect their families and the families of their children. The economic damage of closing schools,
0:51.5	that's Business Daily from the BBC.
0:59.9	It's quite hard because I'm falling behind a little bit.
1:02.7	Some children really do enjoy learning.
1:09.5	And I just want to produce more good, up-leveled work. When my dad is in work, I don't do my homework,
1:13.0	but when he's in home, I do my homework,
1:16.0	and I'm very happy to do my homework.
1:18.5	These kids are describing life in a UK household
1:21.4	with just one smartphone between them for internet access.
1:26.0	Dad's struggling to keep them focused.
1:28.8	It does stress them out because they can't do it when they want to do it.
1:33.2	You know, they have to sort of wake and we have to give them time slots to do it sort of thing.
	...

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