Governments should not be too quick to close schools to minimize the spread of Covid-19 as these could lead to higher costs for the future the labor force, according to experts from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
In an Asian Development Blog, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Associate Professor Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, as well as ADB Human and Social Development Division Director Sungsup Ra and Social Sector Specialist Ryotaro Hayashi said closing schools should only be an option of last resort.
Nonetheless, the experts said if school closures are lifted, situations must be closely monitored, particularly the effect of Covid-19 variants on students and teachers.
“We must keep in mind that school closure should not be a first option. The school reopening decision should adopt a risk-based approach and school closure be used as a last resort,” they said.
The authors noted the recent Asian Development Outlook (ADO) estimates that school closures will lead to $1.25 trillion in future earnings losses in Asia and the Pacific. This assumes that every student loses $180 every year from their expected future annual earnings.
In the same study, ADB estimated that the loss in lifetime earnings of Filipino children could be as high as $36.138 billion under the “pessimistic” scenario. The loss in lifetime earnings could reach $26.904 billion under the optimistic scenario and $30.696 billion in the intermediate scenario.
Despite these estimates, the authors said some policy-makers want to keep schools closed until large-scale vaccination is achieved in a given population to contribute to herd immunity.
However, they said, this may take a lot of time. The authors noted that there is limited availability of vaccines, logistics complications, phased approaches in vaccination, and that vaccination for school-aged children have not yet been developed.
“It makes sense to introduce strict lockdowns, including school closure when Covid-19 variants are increasing exponentially as we have seen in some developing countries for the last few weeks. For those countries with relatively less risk, however, it is reasonable to question whether school closure is the best option to save children’s lives,” the authors said.
They noted that schools have been fully or partially closed for more than a year in many developing countries. The world’s longest full closure as of 29 March 2021 was Bangladesh, at 47 weeks, according to Unesco.
They added that Myanmar was close behind at 43 weeks followed by the Philippines at 33 weeks. When partial school closure is included, Nepal is highest at 53 weeks in the world and schools in South Asia continue especially long school closures among developing Asian regions.
Earlier, Commission on Higher Education Chairman Prospero de Vera was quoted as saying that there was “no going back to the traditional, full-packed, face-to-face classrooms.” He noted that flexible learning would be the norm in 2021 onward.
De Vera noted that allowing students to go back to classrooms will be a waste of investments made by the government and private institutions on technology, teacher training, and retrofits that were needed in the new normal.
Image credits: Winona Sadia