From the article:
Around 4 million Brazilian schoolchildren and university students, according to surveys, have dropped out during this pandemic year, the equivalent of one in 12. Furthermore, there is a worrisome pattern: Those who have dropped out tend to be just entering puberty, have darker skin and come from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds.
Several countries are essentially starting over again, says Shelby Carvalho, who works for the Washington-based think tank Center for Global Development and is researching the consequences the pandemic has had for education. There is a risk of progress being reversed in the school system, she explains. "Schools are in crisis management mode, trying to just do what they can to make sure that students actually come back to school,” she says.
Carvalho believes that many countries are now paying the price for never really taking "pre-existing conditions" within their educations systems seriously enough. Even before the pandemic, economic crises around the world had resulted in shrinking education budgets. Globally, teachers are poorly paid or have been laid off and there has been, she adds, a shortage of investment in technological infrastructure for schools, a failure that the pandemic has exposed, despite hurriedly developed radio or TV learning programs.
