Today Joel Young should be at school.
He is 11 years old and lives with his six brothers and his father in Little Bay, a small fishing community on the west coast of Jamaica.
In mid-March - as in much of the globe - they decreed confinement on the island, which for this child meant the end of school.
Since then, he has not returned.
Bringing education into the home is an almost impossible task when the educational skeleton is already heavily hit, the internet only reaches 55% of households and 34% of families do not even have a device from which to connect.
This is the reality of Jamaica.
And from Joel.
With different names and stories, this obstacle course to receive training during the pandemic has been the constant of more than 137 million students in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is detailed in the latest report from Unicef
Education on pause
, which warns of economic losses of 1.2 billion dollars (one billion euros) and dire social consequences for this generation of children who have been without classes for more than 170 days in person.
For them, Mondays are nothing like they used to be.
School, an obstacle course
The UN asks to reopen schools to avoid a "generational catastrophe"
“The covid-19 has shown the vulnerability of education.
We are facing an existential problem and we cannot hesitate anymore "
The coronavirus has exacerbated educational inequalities in the world
While many schools in Africa, Asia and Europe are gradually reopening, in 18 of the 36 countries and territories in the region studied in the report, classroom doors remain completely closed.
And, as of the end of October, only 13 countries - mostly Caribbean islands with very small student populations - had returned to full presence.
97% of the students have not returned to class.
Kenon King, 35, didn't want to wait for Jamaica's turn, whose classrooms have yet to reopen.
He is the principal of Little Bay Elementary School, where Joel Young studies, and 185 other students, each with very different realities.
That is why the school opted for a mixed system to reach everyone, from virtual classes to delivery of homework.
For the
messenger of duties,
"the coronavirus could not rob them of the right to education."
On the one hand, Unicef, in alliance with the Ministry of Education of Jamaica and the efforts of a team of dedicated teachers, launched a digital transformation process in which they trained 1,200 teachers in distance learning techniques and managed to teach the lessons through Google Classroom and WhatsApp calls.
And, on the other hand, King collects and delivers the assignments to the 80 students who do not have internet or a device from which to follow the class.
Once a week, King starts the route on his motorcycle with his homework in a backpack.
With a mask, a safety distance and a lot of tenderness, he goes from door to door making sure that "his boys" continue to study: "We couldn't forget any of them," he says smilingly through a video call.
I pray every day that this happens quickly and Joel can continue studying from school.
I pray and pray that I have a future
Beside him, Wayne Young, the father of one of the beneficiaries of the program listens with admiration: “I don't know how to thank you.
He never stopped educating my son ”.
Young makes no secret of how difficult the past few months have been for his family of eight.
He is a fisherman and a few weeks ago his boat broke down and he can no longer seek his usual livelihood.
“I pray every day that this happens quickly and Joel can continue studying from school.
I pray and pray that he has a future ”, he has the concern anchored in his eyes.
"Every time King knocks on the door, my son's face changes," she adds.
Around 42 million students have received remote training at home, supported by Unicef, through radio, television and Internet, depending on the characteristics and accesses of each country.
Joel Young studies with the material that his teacher gives him weekly, since he does not have internet to access the virtual classroom.
In the video, his story.Unicef
“Stopping going to school is much more than not receiving academic training,” says Ruth Custode, an emergency education specialist at the organization's regional office.
"It is leaving behind socialization, physical contact with teachers and their classmates, it is, for many, not having a safe space or losing the most nutritious meal of the day ... School is much more than learning to read and write."
The Ramirez know it.
Crispin Evenilda, 11 years old, and Iker Rufu, 7, are the only children of Óscar Ovidio Ramírez who went to school.
Until seven months ago, Ramírez had assured food for both of them at the Tishmutique Olopa School, in southern Guatemala.
Since the pandemic broke out, this farmer had to give up street vending and the food bag that he began to receive for Crispin and Iker became the livelihood of the ten members of the family.
The youngest is 14 months old.
Like them, 80 million students in Latin America and the Caribbean are missing the healthiest meal of the day, according to the report.
For many families, the fact that the school has a dining room is an incentive to send their children.
We fear that many will disengage after the pandemic
Ramírez regrets not being able to give her children an easier life.
“This year everything came together.
The harvest was very bad due to climate change and on top of that I was unable to sell on the street or in shops.
Everything closed and right
now
I am very short of financial resources, ”this 42-year-old father explains uncomfortably through a video call he makes with his neighbor's mobile.
In the last three months, he has received several deliveries of food with which he hopes to "escape."
Custode insists: “Food is another of the main legs of education: if you are not well fed, you are not healthy and you cannot study at your best.
In addition, for many families, the fact that the school has a dining room is an incentive to send their children.
We fear that many will disengage after the pandemic. "
Three million schoolchildren will not return to the classroom after the pandemic
Unesco estimates that about 3.1 million children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean will never return to school after the coronavirus pandemic.
The indicators also point out that this region will suffer one of the largest decreases in school enrollment, 1.83%, among the rest of the globe, since the percentage of minors who do not receive any type of training (neither remote nor face-to-face) has soared from 4% to 18% in recent months.
According to UNICEF findings, this figure scales to 21% in the poorest households in the region.
The Alemán-Téllez family follow their daughter's virtual therapy through a mobile phone.
In the video, the story of little Rouss.Unicef
School closings affect all students, but not all are affected equally.
Children with disabilities have been doubly impacted by this stoppage.
María Delia Espinoza, a specialist in Child Survival and Development at UNICEF in Nicaragua, warns in the study of the terrible consequences: "A child who does not continue with his regular therapy can go back up to six months for each month lost."
Two-year-old Rouss Alemán-Téllez was born with myelomeningocele, a form of spina bifida that could prevent him from walking.
At the beginning of the year, the little girl began to move and even to walk, thanks to the work of the therapists and the efforts of her parents.
The parenthesis for the coronavirus would have been disastrous.
But his educational center, Los Pipitos, a Unicef partner organization, adapted the formats so that they could continue virtually 164 therapies of the 787 children and adolescents who normally attend.
The goal, everyone has a say, is to reach everyone.
Uruguay, the first to reopen educational centers
Classes in Uruguay, although closed for more than a month, never stopped.
And the secret is not in better containment of the virus or in greater post-covid investment.
The enormous difference with neighboring countries is due to the fact that the educational system has been preparing for digitization since 2007, thanks to the Ceibal Plan.
This project allowed 360,000 students to access technological devices, created content platforms and virtual learning management systems, and successfully trained teachers.
Thus, in the face of the emergency, the educational muscle responded agilely.
During the confinement, access to virtual platforms quadrupled.
“More than 75% of the students and 84% of the teachers connected,” says Marcelo Pérez, a leading education specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In mid-April, rural schools - in which it was more easy to guarantee physical distance and outdoor classrooms - they were back to normal operation and, by the end of June, the rest, both public and private, had already joined, with hardly any health incidents.
Pérez celebrates the years of preparation: “The Ceibal Plan was an attempt to change the pedagogical model and adapt it to the 21st century.
At times like these, we realized that he was heading in the right direction. "
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