Third high-level meeting on schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic Virtual meeting hosted by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2 July 2021 ABSTRACT The third high-level meeting on schooling in the time of COVID-19, jointly organized by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), took place on 2 July 2021. The first high-level meeting, in August 2020, allowed countries to take stock on measures needed for the next school year and led to the setting up of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The TAG presented recommendations to a second high-level meeting in December 2020, after which it revised the recommendations for presentation to this third high-level meeting. This report briefly summarizes contributions to the meeting. Keywords CHILDREN SCHOOLS COVID-19 SCHOOL TEACHER MITIGATION MEASURES VACCINATION WHO/EURO:2021-3169-42927-59948 © World Health Organization 2021 Some rights reserved. This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo). Under the terms of this licence, you may copy, redistribute and adapt the work for noncommercial purposes, provided the work is appropriately cited, as indicated below. In any use of this work, there should be no suggestion that WHO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. If you adapt the work, then you must license your work under the same or equivalent Creative Commons licence. 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Third high-level meeting on schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic: Virtual meeting hosted by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2 July 2021. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2021. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. Cataloguing-in-Publication (CIP) data. CIP data are available at http://apps.who.int/iris. Sales, rights and licensing. To purchase WHO publications, see http://apps.who.int/bookorders. To submit requests for commercial use and queries on rights and licensing, see http://www.who.int/about/licensing. Third-party materials. If you wish to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, it is your responsibility to determine whether permission is needed for that reuse and to obtain permission from the copyright holder. 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This publication contains the report of the Third high-level meeting on schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic: Virtual meeting hosted by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2 July 2021 and does not necessarily represent the decisions or policies of WHO. page iii CONTENTS Page High-level meeting outcome statement ............................................................................... iv Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Background and context ............................................................................................. 1 Opening .................................................................................................................... 1 Country experiences ........................................................................................................... 5 Keeping schools open ................................................................................................. 5 Testing in schools ...................................................................................................... 5 Mitigation measures ................................................................................................... 6 Educational outcomes ................................................................................................ 7 Children in vulnerable situations .................................................................................. 7 Changing school environments .................................................................................... 8 Children’s and adolescents’ involvement in decision-making ........................................... 9 Vaccination strategies................................................................................................. 9 Final session .................................................................................................................... 10 Closing messages from partners ................................................................................ 11 Annex 1 ...................................................................................................................... 13 Agenda ................................................................................................................... 13 page iv High-level meeting outcome statement WHO Meeting on Schooling in the time of COVID-19: 3rd high-level meeting jointly organized by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2 July 2021 Europe has been the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic during winter and spring 2020/2021, with high numbers of cases in most countries of the WHO European Region. After opening schools at the beginning of the school year in early autumn of 2020, distance and hybrid learning measures and lockdowns of schools were seen in most countries. The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic has provided eight recommendations that were presented to the high-level meeting. The TAG, as a living platform, has reviewed and updated previous recommendations and will continue to advise on the best balance of benefits and harms of applied measures, considering the rapidly changing situation. The work is based on the timely collection, analysis, dissemination and exchange of evidence and practices. The main messages from the meeting are as follows. While children are not the main drivers of this pandemic, they risk being among its biggest victims: largely spared from the direct health effects of COVID-19, the measures put in place to control the pandemic are having a profound effect on their health and well-being. • Effective policy considerations for the school year should focus on the goal of having children and adolescents physically present in school. Schools should be among the last places to be closed, as school closures have been shown to be detrimental to child health and well-being and educational outcomes. • Keeping distance, limiting contact between children, wearing masks, hygiene and enhancing ventilation are the mainstay of current transmission control in schools. • Public health approaches need to balance ALL effects of the measures: actions need to be monitored carefully and adapted as more evidence becomes available so that we do better than harm. • Improving the overall schooling and learning environment: as investments are being made, countries should aim to make every school