Disrupted learning during COVID-19: the impact of school closures on education outcomes in South Africa

Abstract

By mid-April about 1.725 billion students globally had been affected by the closure of schools and higher education institutions in response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the UNESCO Monitoring Report, 192 countries had implemented nationwide closures, affecting about 99% of the world's student population. In the 1980s during apartheid many South Africans saw school boycotts bring schooling to sporadic halts, but the scale and complexity of what has been happening during the COVID-19 lockdown is entirely new territory.