The twin shocks of school closures and global recession due to COVID-19 could have long-term costs to education and development. But, if countries move quickly to support continued learning, they can at least partially mitigate the damage. And with the right planning and policies, they can use the crisis as an opportunity to build more inclusive, efficient, and resilient education systems.
This report presents a set of policies to mitigate the impacts and groups them in three overlapping phases: Coping, Managing Continuity, and Improving and Accelerating. The guiding principle are to use every opportunity, in each phase, to do things better. This includes the provision of incentives, such as school feeding and school health programmes, to maximize reenrolment and attendance as schools reopen. By learning from innovations and emergency processes, systems can adapt and scale up the more effective solutions. In doing so, they could become more effective, more agile, and more resilient. A vision and proactive action will help not only mitigate the damage from the current crisis, but could turn recovery into real growth.
