LONDON: As an apparent effect of coronavirus pandemic in the school going kid, 9.7 million children of the school-going age are likely to be school dropouts permanently.
According to a report of Save the Children, with many young people required to work or girls forced into early marriage to support their families, 7 to 9.7 million children may drop out of their schools for good.
“The coronavirus pandemic has caused an “unprecedented education emergency” with up to 9.7 million children affected by school closures at risk of never going back to class,” Save the Children said on Monday.
The UNESCO data showed that in April, 1.6 billion young people dropped out of schools and university due to measures like lockdown taken to contain COVID-19, the number is about 90 percent of the world’s entire student population.
“For the first time in human history, an entire generation of children globally has had their education disrupted,” Save the Children’s report titled Save our Education claimed.
It said the economic crisis caused by the pandemic could force an extra 90 to 117 million children into poverty, with a knock-on effect on school admissions.
Save the Children warns that the crisis could leave a shortfall of $77 billion in education budgets in low and middle income countries by the end of 2021.
“Around 10 million children may never return to school — this is an unprecedented education emergency and governments must urgently invest in learning,” Save the Children chief executive Inger Ashing said .
“Instead we are at risk of unparallelled budget cuts which will see existing inequality explode between the rich and the poor, and between boys and girls.”
The charity urged governments and donors to invest more funds behind a new global education plan to help children back into school when it is safe and until then support distance learning.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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