Learning Losses May Lead to Earning Losses

Governments around the world are tackling the COVID-19 pandemic imposing partial or full lockdown measures, often including school closures. However, researchers warn about the long-term negative effects of this disruption in the education system. They put the costs of school closures to billions of dollars.

Researchers claim that learning losses may lead to earning losses. The Visegrad Group (V4) countries are no exception to global education trends, but it is still early to tell whether the current school closures can be compensated for or the long-term consequences of the pandemic will put the cohesion of the societies and the planned technological shift to a test.

Universal school closure as an emergency response

When the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, governments were experimenting with a series of measures to tackle the spread of the virus. School closures were among the universal responses to fight back, or at least slow down the virus.

Globally, as many as 188 countries – ranging from Indonesia to Slovakia and from Canada to Argentina – opted for shutting down their schools, partially or entirely, affecting a total of 1.6 billion children worldwide.