The next 22 and 23 Marchthe Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean will participate in ‘A commitment to action for education’, an event organized by the World Bank, the Inter-American Dialogue, Unesco and Unicef, which will have Colombia as the host country.
The purpose of this meeting, which will be held at the Hilton de Corferias hotel in Bogotá, will be to join efforts at the regional level to address the learning gaps caused by the closure of schools due to covid-19.
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And it is that according to data from the World Bank, due to the health emergency, children and adolescents lost an average of 1.5 years of learning.
In this regard, the Colombian Minister of Education, Aurora Vergara Figueroa, stated: “We have a great challenge that unites us as a region and it is to draw up a road map that allows us to face the learning crisis caused by the pandemic, and establish common goals that incorporate pedagogical approaches and programs for the strengthening, acceleration and recovery of learning.s of our boys and girls, incorporating socio-emotional skills and mental health issues as a priority”.
Preliminary evidence from the region shows that the greatest learning losses are found in the elementary grades and among students from the lowest socioeconomic levels.
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In addition, in the report ‘Two years later: saving a generation’, the World Bank, Unicef and Unesco maintain that, if these fundamental learnings are not guaranteed, an entire generation will not be equipped with essential skills in literacy and mathematics.
This will be reflected in the lack of employment for young people and in a greater socioeconomic gap. It is estimated that for this alone the youth population could lose up to 12 percent of their future income. On the other hand, the latest report on human capital from the World Bank highlights that, due to the pandemic, preschool-age children have lost more than 34 percent of learning in language and early literacy and more than 29 percent in mathematics.
To face this enormous challenge, during the event Colombia will call on the countries of the region to unite through a ‘Commitment to action for education’, which is promoted by the World Bank, Unicef, Unesco, USAID, the Ministry of Foreign Relations of the Commonwealth of Nations of the United Kingdom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in Latin America, by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Secretariat of Education of Bogotá.
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Its purpose is to get governments and the educational community to implement actions to ensure that all boys and girls in the world achieve basic learning.
The Ministers of Education of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, among others, will attend the meeting, in which common goals and commitments will be set for the recovery of learning .
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