HUMAN RIGHTS “Years Don’t Wait for Them” Increased Inequality in Children’s Right to Education WATCH Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic “Years Don’t Wait for Them” Increased Inequalities in Children’s Right to Education Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic Copyright © 2021 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-62313-905-6 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people worldwide. We scrupulously investigate abuses, expose the facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. 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For more information, please visit our website: http://www.hrw.org MAY 2021 ISBN: 978-1-62313-905-6 “Years Don’t Wait for Them” Increased Inequalities in Children’s Right to Education Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic Summary ......................................................................................................................... 1 Recommendations ......................................................................................................... 10 Key Recommendations ........................................................................................................... 10 Recommendations to Ministries of Education During the Pandemic ......................................... 12 Recommendations to Ministries of Education During the Progressive Return to School-Based Teaching ................................................................................................................................ 13 Recommendations to Governments for Building a Better Education ......................................... 14 Recommendations to Improve International and Multilateral Action ........................................ 18 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 19 I. Devastation of Millions of Children’s Education ........................................................... 22 Girls ....................................................................................................................................... 24 Schools that Provided No Education during Early Lockdown .................................................... 25 Loss of Entitlement to Free or Compulsory Education Due to Aging Out during Pandemic ......... 30 Children Already Facing Discrimination and Exclusion from Education ..................................... 30 Children Living in Poverty or Low-Income Households ............................................................ 46 II. “Digital Divides”: Inequalities and Dependence Upon Access to Devices and Internet . 56 Children Without Electricity ..................................................................................................... 57 Children Without Radios or Televisions ................................................................................... 58 Inequalities in Internet Access ................................................................................................ 59 Inequalities in Access to Devices ............................................................................................ 67 Teachers Not Provided with Devices or Internet ....................................................................... 73 Prior Government Underinvestment in Schools Deepened the Digital Divide ............................ 74 Digital Literacy—Critical to Online Learning—Often Lacking ..................................................... 77 III. Greatly Diminished Quality of Education .................................................................. 86 Students Left to Study on their Own ....................................................................................... 86 Fewer Hours of Instruction and Fewer Subjects ....................................................................... 88 Preschool and Early Learner Education Also Hit ....................................................................... 91 IV. Harm to Children and their Education ........................................................................ 94 Poor School Performance, and Academic Regression ............................................................. 94 Students Dropping Out of Education ....................................................................................... 95 Psychosocial and Emotional Harm ......................................................................................... 98 Loss of Wellbeing Support Provided at Schools ..................................................................... 102 Benefits of Distance Learning for Some Students .................................................................. 106 V. Pressures on Teachers and Parents .......................................................................... 110 Pressures on Parents ............................................................................................................ 110 Burden on Parents Who are Also Teachers ............................................................................ 112 Gender Disparities in Additional Child Care and Supporting Distance Learning ...................... 112 Teachers’ Workload .............................................................................................................. 114 Costs to Teachers .................................................................................................................. 115 Reduction in Teacher Salaries ............................................................................................... 116 VI. Education is Every Child’s Right ............................................................................... 117 Strong Presumption Against Retrogression in Education........................................................ 120 Access to Internet Now Key to Many Children’s Right to Education ......................................... 121 International Cooperation and Assistance ............................................................................. 123 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... 124 Summary Decades of slow but steady progress in educating more children around the world abruptly ended in 2020. By April, an unprecedented 1.4 billion students were shut out of their pre- primary, primary, and secondary schools in more than 190 countries, in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. As the pandemic persisted, schools in some countries or jurisdictions reopened for in-person teaching, or opened for some students, while elsewhere schools have remained closed ever since with learning to greater or lesser extent taking place online or otherwise remotely. In some places, there have been waves of schools opening only to close again. An estimated 90 percent of the world’s school-aged children have had their education disrupted by the pandemic. Children, who tend to escape the more severe symptoms of Covid-19, nevertheless had to sacrifice the education to which they are entitled, and accept restrictions that often harmed their friendships and mental health, as part of public efforts to help protect the health and save lives of their families, friends, teachers, and those in their communities. Céleste A., a 15-year-old girl living in the Central African Republic, told Human Rights Watch how the closure of her school affected her: “It doesn’t do me any good to not go to school. I feel like something in me is missing.” In Mexico, 15-year-old Sonia M. said: “At first I thought it was cool! But later I realized that I now want to go back to school.” And Jae-kuk H., a 14-year-old boy in South Korea, put it simply: “I feel like the earth has just stopped.” As the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines brings hope of an eventual end to pandemic-related school closures, the aspiration that things merely “return to how they were before” is insufficient. As a primary school teacher in an under-resourced neighborhood of Santiago, Chile, said: “The social issue is the real pandemic: inequality.” This massive disruption to children’s education has highlighted the need for governments to devote serious attention and resources to ameliorate, mitigate, and correct the long- standing inequalities in education systems that have been highlighted and exacerbated during the pandemic. Governments should reverse policies that generate those inequalities, which include persistent under-investment in public education. 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | MAY 2021 Governments’ goal should not merely be the return to school of all students whose education the pandemic disrupted. They should also ensure that those who were not able to learn at the same pace as their peers during the pandemic catch-up on what they missed. Moreover, governments should extend education to the children persistently excluded from schooling even before the crisis. All children have a right to education—a right that so many children have now been unable to fully enjoy. This was often the consequence of