In the Philippines on Monday, millions of students returned to the classroom after over two years of distance learning. The country saw one of the world’s longest school closures. Less than half of public schools, around 24,000, will implement five days of face-to-face classes. Meanwhile, the rest will have a mix of online and in-person classes until November.

It is common for children to live with parents and elderly grandparents in the Philippines, causing increased fears of Covid rapidly spreading and consequently elongating school closures. The country experienced one of the worst Covid outbreaks in South East Asia, with nearly three million cases and about 50,000 deaths.

Before the pandemic, 9 out 10 children in the Philipines could “not read simple text with comprehension” by the age of 10, according to a study by the World Bank last year. Many experts believe that the education crisis has worsened as a result of the prolonged suspension of learning in the classroom. UNICEF has said that “prolonged school closures, poor health risk mitigation, and household-income shocks had the biggest impact on learning poverty.”

Image from Reuters