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Pursuing new approaches to deliver quality education is key
Children have lost a full year in terms of schooling, making it essential to ensure an alternative mode of delivering education with universal access. File Photo: Sk Enamul Haq
In-person schooling in Bangladesh has remained shut since March 2020. Children have already lost a full year, equivalent to 0.6 learning-adjusted years of schooling based on the learning gap implied by the World Bank (WB) in its Human Capital Index (2020) for Bangladesh. The longer they are out of the formal schooling system, the greater will be the erosion of the foundational skills they had acquired, not to speak of what they would have added to those if the school year were not lost.
From ruin to revival
The government had no other option but to partially reopen the economy. Bangladesh could not afford a lengthy lockdown. Photo: Palash Khan
A year ago on this day the government confirmed the maiden positive case of the coronavirus disease in Bangladesh, roughly three months after its outbreak in China.
The biggest blow came on March 18 when the first person died from the illness linked to the deadly virus. As the cases spread rapidly, the government had to impose a strict lockdown.
It came about overnight and just upended everything. People s lifestyle changed. Livelihoods were disrupted. Schools, colleges and universities were shut, shops shuttered down and offices closed their doors.
NationofChange
As Black and Latinx families experience disproportionate food insecurity, experts warn of famine in dozens of countries.
Beyond the questions surrounding the availability, effectiveness and safety of a vaccine, the COVID-19 pandemic has led us to question where our food is coming from and whether we will have enough. According to a United Nations World Food Program (WFP) report, COVID-19 might have left up to 265 million people with acute food shortages in 2020. The combined effect of the pandemic as well as the emerging global recession “could, without large-scale coordinated action, disrupt the functioning of food systems,” which would “result in consequences for health and nutrition of a severity and scale unseen for more than half a century,” states another UN report.
Pandemic May Have Left 265 Million People With Acute Food Shortages in 2020
Food is distributed during a mobile food pantry on February 16, 2021, in Immokalee, Florida.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Beyond the questions surrounding the availability, effectiveness and safety of a vaccine, the COVID-19 pandemic has led us to question where our food is coming from and whether we will have enough. According to a United Nations World Food Program (WFP) report, COVID-19 might have left up to 265 million people with acute food shortages in 2020. The combined effect of the pandemic as well as the emerging global recession “could, without large-scale coordinated action, disrupt the functioning of food systems,” which would “result in consequences for health and nutrition of a severity and scale unseen for more than half a century,” states another UN report.