Understanding the Consequences of Major Health Crises for Education: Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic (LEARN)

Introduction

Health crises, natural disasters, and violent conflicts pose global threats to children’s educational development. The frequency and severity of such disruptive events is intensifying due to climate change and the growing instability of the global security architecture. Yet, we lack a systematic understanding of how major disruptive events affect children’s educational development, largely because such events tend to also disrupt the collection of high-quality data on children’s education.

Opportunity Presented by COVID-19

Due to the global scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and extensive data collection efforts as it unfolded, the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the consequences of major health crises for children’s educational development. LEARN will leverage this opportunity to reveal the principal pathways through which the pandemic has affected the educational development of children in different world regions, as well as the key factors that reduce or exacerbate its adverse consequences.

Core Objectives of LEARN

LEARN will generate and apply high-quality, cross-national data and advanced quantitative and meta-analytical techniques to achieve five core objectives:

1. Trace children’s recovery of COVID-19 learning deficits using a living meta-dataset and online tracker.
2. Assess COVID-19 effects on children’s early-life trajectories.
3. Map the processes through which the pandemic affected children’s educational development.
4. Reveal the factors that reduce or exacerbate COVID-19 effects.
5. Identify the most effective remedial education interventions to promote children’s learning recovery.

Conclusion

This ambitious and innovative research programme will substantially advance our understanding of how major health crises affect children’s educational development, generate several new data resources, and provide a basis for policymakers to future-proof education systems to meet the growing threats posed by major disruptive events.