# **Introduction**

COVID-19-related school closures are pushing countries off track from achieving their learning goals. When children are not able to attend school, they lose an opportunity to acquire new knowledge and they may forget what they learned in the past. Unremediated learning losses may compound over time if children continue to fall further behind the curriculum (Kaffenberger 2020; <u>World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF 2021). Simultaneously, the economic shock of the crisis and its impact on income, employment, and</u> government budgets can worsen learning outcomes and reduce the future earning capacity of millions of students.

In many countries around the world, there simply is no nationally representative pre-pandemic baseline estimate of learning to use in assessing COVID-19 learning loss. Many other countries that do measure learning do not do it regularly or in a comparable way, which makes capturing COVID-19 learning loss estimates particularly challenging. Only a handful of countries have empirical estimates of learning losses during COVID-19. Given the lack of actual data, simulations are a useful tool for estimating potential learning losses and their long-term impacts, so that countries can prepare to respond to the adverse consequences of the pandemic.

This work updates and extends the simulation work initially presented in Azevedo, Hasan et al. (2021) and <u>Azevedo (2020). Some of the main updates to the simulation tool include the use of observed school closure</u> information at the country level, inclusion of information on partial closures, and the update of the prepandemic Learning Poverty baseline for certain countries. This work complements the latest high-level results presented in the <u>State of Global Learning Poverty 2022 Update report, and provides detailed information on</u> the updated simulations. We focus on four key outcomes of the simulation model to contextualize learning loss impacts: (i) Learning Poverty, (ii) Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling, (iii) Percent below minimum proficiency in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and (iv) Lifetime earnings.

Since the publication of the learning loss simulation results in June 2020 in <u>Azevedo, Hasan et al. (2021), the</u> paper has been downloaded more than 17,000<sup>3</sup> times and cited more than 550 times, emphasizing the interest and need to understand learning losses as the pandemic unfolds.<sup>4</sup> To date, the simulation results have helped ministries of education, key national stakeholders, and development partners advocate for and plan evidencebased recovery strategies for mitigating potential learning losses arising from COVID-19 school closures, as well as for tackling the chronic Learning Poverty problem that existed before the crisis.

Given the substantial learning data gaps<sup>5</sup> that accompany the long-lasting learning crisis, these simulation results are often the only source of evidence that can guide policymakers, educators, and researchers towards addressing and analyzing potential learning loss impacts on a global scale. Although they are well aligned with evidence on observed learning losses that has begun to come out, it is important to keep in mind that these results are simulations. They do not replace the value of actual data on learning losses or mitigation effectiveness, which is limited at present, particularly for low-income countries.

> 3 <u>https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33945</u> 4 Based on Google Scholar statistics here: <u>https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=lTKXA78AAAAJ&citation_for_view=lTKXA78AAAA J:8p8iYwVyaVcC</u>

> 5 In July 2021, UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries to monitor the quality of their education systems and assess if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a Learning Data Compact, a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

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