FOUR in five sixth graders in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are expected to lack basic reading comprehension proficiency, according to a report released Thursday by the World Bank and UNICEF, in collaboration with UNESCO.

While the region was already in a learning crisis prior to the pandemic, this represents a substantial increase. This new and staggering estimate suggests that two years of COVID-19 school closures in the region may have set learning outcomes back by more than a decade.

The new report, Two Years After: Saving a Generation, said these learning losses could cost today’s students in the region a 12 per cent decrease in lifetime earnings.

Children in Latin America and the Caribbean experienced some of the longest and uninterrupted COVID-19 school closures in the world. On average, students in the region lost, fully or partially, two thirds of all in-person school days since the start of the pandemic, with an estimated loss of 1.5 years of learning.

“Latin America and the Caribbean faces an unprecedented education crisis which could compromise our countries’ future development,” said Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, World Bank vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean. “The fact that a large majority of sixth graders may not be able to understand what they read jeopardises the future well-being of millions of children who have not developed critical foundational skills, which increases the risks to deepen the already long-standing inequities in the region.”

Younger and more vulnerable children have been disproportionately affected by the learning losses, the latest evidence from across the region shows, setting the stage for increased inequality and a generational crisis.