World Bank’s Global Director for Education Jaime Saavedra was in India last week to meet Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and governments of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh to discuss concerns over learning losses for children due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for concerted efforts to bridge these gaps. In a sit-down interview with Jagriti Chandra, he talks about the impact of school closures in India, the need for re-enrollment campaigns, and reassessment of learning levels as schools reopen after a gap of two years and calls for investment in education technology to complement classroom teaching.
What was the agenda of your visit to India?
We met the Minister of Education [Dharmendra Pradhan] to share with him that as the World Bank we emphasise a lot on the work that is needed both globally and in different countries and to bridge the learning losses due to the impact of the pandemic on the education systems all over the world. Globally, we were living in a learning crisis even before the pandemic. Now, with this gigantic shock we have had of two years of children out of school there has been a dramatic effect on their learning and their well-being. Obviously, they share these concerns and we will continue working with them in order to accelerate the learning process. We visited Gujarat, which is doing a lot of progress on how to accelerate the process of learning recovery. We visited their command and control centre where they monitor both teachers and students to see how they can better support them. Then we were in U.P. to visit schools and in Delhi we had meetings with NGOs and think tanks. This is in the context of the very large support of the World Bank to India which includes a portfolio of $2.1 billion to the country.
