OPINION
UNICEF Kenya Representative, Maniza Zaman. [Courtesy]
Children have endured difficult times since Covid-19 arrived in Kenya. In 2020, school closures interrupted learning for over 17 million children and increased risk of violence, child labour and child marriage.
Mental well-being suffered, and it was encouraging to see the safe return of children to schools in 2021 and subsequent exam results – in which 893 candidates scored grade A, up from 627 in 2019.
But for many children, the return to school has not yet meant a return to normality. First, because of the learning loss younger and rural children experienced and second, because some children have not returned yet.
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Emmanuel Mayeza, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of the Free State, South Africa. He completed his PhD in Sociology at Stellenbosch University in 2015. He did postdoctoral studies in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University and also at the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Emmanuel’s current research interests include education, gender/sexualities, violence in and around schools, childhood/youth studies and social inequalities. He publishes in leading academic journals in his field of research including British Journal of Sociology of Education; NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies; Culture, Health & Sexuality; Gender and Education; International Studies in Sociology of Education; Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education; and International Journal of Educational Development. He is an invited peer reviewer for various academic journals including Children’s Geogra
2008
Publications 2020 Beyond free primary education: Pathways to academic persistence in Kenyan free education system. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary , Elementary,7 Early Childhood Education. DOI: 10.1080/03004279.2020.1840606, 2020 Prevalence and predictors of receipt of weight loss advice among a nationally representative sample of overweight and obesity Kenyans. African Health Sciences,20(2),903-911. , 2020 The relationship between alternative strategies of funding and institutional financial health for public research universities. Higher Education Politics and Economics.6(1),81-103. doi: 10.32674/hepe.v6i1.2439., 2020 Experiences of students who are single mothers on university campuses: A Systematic Review from 1997 to 2019. International Journal of Higher Education and Research ,10(2):1-31. ISSN 2277 260X (online). http://www.ijher.com. doi:10.7755/ijhe
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As much as a year s worth of past academic progress made by disadvantaged children in the Global South may have been wiped out by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have calculated.
The research, by academics from the University of Cambridge and RTI International, attempts to quantify the scale of learning loss that children from poor and marginalised communities in the Global South may have experienced, and the extent to which home support and access to learning resources could ameliorate it. While it is known that the education of these children has suffered disproportionately during the pandemic, it is much harder to measure exactly how much their academic progress has been impeded while schools have been closed.