The Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Educational Equity Around the World

Mapping the Immediate and Longer-term Implications

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest and longest global disruption of school-based education in modern history. Almost every country in the world has experienced school closures, affecting well over a billion children. While closing schools to mitigate transmission risks and help ensure public health and safety has widely been seen as a necessary policy response, research to date indicates that school closures have disproportionately affected already vulnerable populations and have compounded and exacerbated gaps in educational equity based on gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, disabilities, and geographic location. In this paper, I first share findings from an international and comparative review of data and analysis generated since February 2020, to map some of the most troubling and immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on education access and equity. In the second part of the presentation, some of the longer-term implications of the pandemic’s negative effects on education access and equity will be discussed, including possible policy responses and innovations.