The Covid-19 pandemic has “ousted” hundreds of millions of children from formal schooling around the world. These children – elementary and secondary levels alike – are today neither in physical nor in virtual schooling. They are, in educational terms, nowhere, and are going nowhere fast.
This is arguably the most underappreciated, time-urgent catastrophe of the entire pandemic period. If these children are not found and reintegrated into schooling with the greatest possible speed, they simply cannot succeed. In many cases, they will not have the skills and tools to survive in the post-pandemic world – a poorer, harsher world for the foreseeable future. Entire societies and countries will be destabilised because of massive underclasses, and millions of young people will have hugely diminished life expectancy and prospects.
The Institute for 21st Century Questions, driven by a deep sense of the duty incumbent on thinking adults, has brought together leaders in education, politics, policy, business, culture, sport and communities from around the world to address this moral and strategic catastrophe.
Worldwide Commission to Educate All Kids (Post-Pandemic) has been formed to bring acute awareness to the fact and consequences of hundreds of millions of children, in scores of countries around the world, ousted from all forms of schooling due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Commission encourages competent national, regional, provincial, state and local authorities, as well as school boards and schools themselves, to comprehensively survey and audit all cases of children ousted from school; and urges them to develop and implement strategies to reintegrate these children into formal schooling with great urgency.
Manzoor Hasan, OBE, Executive Director, Centre for Peace and Justice, Brac University, represents the Commission from Bangladesh. The Commission is formed of experienced educationists, policy advocates and government officials from around the globe.
On February 26th, an all-day open conference will take place for the entire Worldwide Commission. It is important that decision-makers and key parties from our country listen in and participate in this conference – so that the insights and learnings of the Commission can be transmitted directly to those charged with action, and vice versa. The conference will be collegial but very purpose-oriented.
The time and online link of the meeting will be shared closer to the date of the conference.