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The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has collected data from countries around the world showing how children’s education in the classroom has been affected by infection control measures against the coronavirus.
More than 168 million children have not been able to go to school in almost a year, as schools have been closed due to the risk of spreading the infection.
The figure rises to around 214 million children, one in seven in the world, if the definition is expanded to include children who lost more than three-quarters of their education in the classroom.
A large proportion of them are in Central American and Caribbean countries. Panama is the country that has closed its schools the most days in the last year, followed by El Salvador, Bangladesh and Bolivia, according to Unicef.
UNICEF notes that school closings have had devastating consequences for children’s learning and well-being.
“The most vulnerable children and those without access to distance education are at greater risk of never returning to the classroom and also of being forced into marriage or child labor,” the organization wrote in a press release.
Erik Paulsson Rönnbäck / TT
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