Child education in the time of pandemic: Learning loss and dropout

Muhammad Khan and Junaid Ahmed

Children and Youth Services Review, 2021, vol. 127, issue C

Abstract: The disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had affected the education sector at an unprecedented scale. In order to contain the spread of the virus, a large number of countries across the globe have shut their schools to handle the pandemic. However, it has adversely affected students' learning and school attendance. In this regard, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on the learning loss, school dropout, and the economic costs in term of foregone earnings for children in Pakistan. The study finds a substantial decrease in Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS) with worsening consequences for girls than boys. Likewise, the aggregate economic cost amounts to 107 billion dollars when adjusted for human capital utilisation. Besides, our simulation results suggest that about 7.2 million children dropout due to a reduction in household expenditure by 50 percent. In comparison, the dropout is more pronounced at the primary level of schooling. The results recommend that the government design robust social protection and remote education strategies to mitigate school closure’s adverse effect on children's learning. The emphasis should be rather on the long run strategies to cope with a resilient education system of futuristic orientation.

Keywords: COVID-19; Learning loss; School Dropout; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740921001444
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:127:y:2021:i:c:s0190740921001444

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106065

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().