Tertiary education is still a privilege available only to a minority. Higher education allows workers to increase their skills, in the hope of getting better jobs in the future. But are highly educated workers better off in the labour market? In pursuing advanced education, workers may expect to be better prepared for the labour market and find a quality job without much delay. ILO reports this is not always the case: highly educated workers can find themselves unemployed, even for a long time.
Education
UNESCO, UNICEF, and partners are launching Building Back Equal: Girls Back to School Guide. The guide aims to help policymakers and practitioners in Ministries of Education address the gender dimensions of COVID-related school closures. It provides recommendations to ensure continuity of learning while schools are closed, and to establish plans for reopening schools in a way that is safe, gender-responsive and child-friendly, and meets the needs of the most marginalised girls.
According to the ILO report, Youth and COVID-19: impacts on jobs, education, rights and mental well-being, 70 per cent of youth who study or combine study with work have been adversely affected by the closing of schools, universities and training centres. Despite the extreme circumstances young people are using their energy to mobilize and speak out in the fight against the crisis. According to the survey one in four have done some volunteer work during the pandemic.
“Debating the Futures of Education” is a video series produced by UNESCO, within the framework of an initiative that seeks to reimagine the futures of education.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, remote doesn’t mean cut off
UNESCO launches Global Skills Academy aiming to equip one million young persons with employability and resilience skills and help them find jobs when youth employment prospects look bleak. The impact of the pandemic on both education and employment has been dramatic. Students enrolled in training institutions and apprentices have been particularly affected by closures as they are dependent on practical training and hardware that is only available in training centres and workplaces.
As nearly 1.2 billion schoolchildren remain affected by school closures and as they grapple with the realities of remote learning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICEF warns inherent inequalities in access to tools and technology threaten to deepen the global learning crisis. "Providing a range of learning tools and accelerating access to the internet for every school and every child is critical,” said UNICEF Chief of Education Robert Jenkins.
Life during the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult for parents and children alike. UNICEF provides the latest information of what parents need to know to prepare for school reopening.
Mobile phone partners of UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition have stepped up to provide free access to online educational content for students affected by COVID-19 induced school closures.
UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP and the World Bank have issued guidelines on the safe reopening of schools amidst ongoing closures affecting nearly 1.3 billion students worldwide. The guidelines caution that the widespread closures of educational facilities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic present an unprecedented risk to children’s education and wellbeing, particularly for the most marginalized children who rely on school for their education, health, safety and nutrition. The guidelines offer practical advice for national and local authorities on how to keep children safe when they return to school.
While schools are reopening in some corners of the world after pandemic-induced closures, the United Nations and its partners are helping children continue their learning through all possible means, including the Internet, radio and television. Among those efforts, UNESCO has issued a call to support learning and knowledge-sharing through open educational resources – materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or under an open license that permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.
UNRWA launches a rapid response distance learning plan, the “Education Cannot Wait” initiative for 118,000 Palestine refugee students in 169 schools due to COVID-19 closures.