REVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON PRIMARY EDUCATION

The paper explores the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the subsequent closure of schools globally. The pandemic has caused irrevocable damage to the education system in human history affecting almost every country worldwide. The presented paper is an effort to understand and analyze the impact of learning loss, and its adverse effect on the learning outcomes of the upcoming generation. The loss of learning so caused is not simply the curricular learning that children's world had acquired if schools would have remained open but also include the ability to read, the ability to write and the ability to discuss; since all these abilities are the foundation to further learning. The author has reviewed various such studies done worldwide and the interventions carried out. Findings of these studies suggest that there is an adverse impact on marginalized children, girl children and children of migrant labourers. It also emphasizes the impact of learning loss in terms of language skills (reading, writing, speaking) along with the mathematical ability of the children. Another insight of the study is about the psychological stress on students, parents and caregivers due to the long closure of schools which is exponentially higher for vulnerable families. The catastrophe of education is also seen in learning poverty (the inability of a student to read and understand a simple story by the age of 10). This learning poverty is feared to be increased from 53% in low and middle-income countries to up to 70% due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The review comes out with various kinds of research done in this field and there is a need to take urgent action for minimizing the impact on all the stakeholders.