Not only did they drive many parents into despair, but research also shows significant learning loss due to school closures and online schooling. However, as always, the consequences hit the poorest regions and people hardest.
Failing Exams in Rural Ghana
When I visited Ghana last March, I saw the impacts of COVID-19 on education in a small rural community in West Africa. Mercy, an orphan girl whose schooling I had been supporting through her elementary and middle school years, was eagerly waiting for her state exam results that would determine whether she could continue to high school. She had always been among the best in her class, so my surprise and her disappointment were great when we picked up her results and they were much worse than expected. It was heartbreaking to console Mercy. Not only did she panic about missing out on further education, she also feared being beaten up by her uncle for the bad results. Fortunately, we were able to evade the latter by going to meet him together.
In this remote village, schools do not have electricity, not to mention computers. Mercy lives in a mud hut and studies by candlelight. When schools closed, there was no remote learning and pupils stayed at home idle for almost half a year. It's no wonder that the results dropped. In addition, teenage pregnancies increased, and a number of pupils did not return to take their exams but instead migrated south to find work. Thus, school closures had a profoundly negative impact on many young destinies.
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