Is vaccination the silver bullet for keeping schools open?

Long-term, nationwide school closures during the COVID-19 crisis have resulted in significant learning losses among the world’s children and have widened existing educational inequalities.

In 2020-2021, students in Europe and Central Asia lost 100 school days of learning on average, with 10 out of 13 countries having reported learning losses among at least some students.  These COVID-related learning losses have so far amounted to one-third to half a year of learning on average in the region.

While most of the region’s high-income countries were able to return children to in-person classrooms quickly after the onset of the pandemic, some middle-income countries kept schools closed for longer. Today, all countries in the region seek to keep their schools fully open and are eager to help children to recover their learning losses, regain socio-emotional skills, and reduce anxiety triggered by uncertainty and change.

Why This Matters

Less learning now means less productivity, income, and economic growth in the future. Each year of schooling has been found to be associated with at least an 8% gain in future earnings given new skills and knowledge, while studies confirm that long-term, nationwide school closures result not only in learning losses but also loss of earnings, particularly for students from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. We recently quantified this loss, finding that 0.3 years of learning loss translate into at least a 3% loss of future earnings. Learning losses incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic so far are considerable, with estimates as high as $15 trillion to $17 trillion worldwide.

The annualized per student loss of future earnings has been calculated as $686, while the lifetime per student loss (in present value) is estimated at $16,883. In Europe and Central Asia, using the same model, annualized losses have been calculated as 0.6% of GDP and lifetime losses at 13% of GDP—devastating for the region.

What’s the Answer?

These estimations clearly demonstrate that countries must find a safe and effective way to enable students to attend school in-person for the full school year. While the challenges involved in remote teaching and learning have emphasized the importance of keeping students in the classroom as much as possible, in-person learning exposes teachers and students to risks as they congregate in often poorly ventilated classrooms where maintaining social distancing is difficult or impossible.

The prerequisite for keeping schools open is to vaccinate as many teachers and students as possible. Vaccines have proven highly effective in protecting individuals from moderate to severe disease and reducing the number of infections. While the Omicron variant has somewhat reduced the protection afforded by the original vaccines and necessitated booster shots, vaccination remains the solution for keeping schools open full-time.

The OECD has estimated that it would cost $50 billion to vaccinate 70% of the global population by mid-2022. But the benefits of increasing vaccination capacity would far outweigh the costs. If this 70% goal can be reached, expenditures on COVID mitigation measures across the global economy could be reduced by around $9-$10 trillion.

Why Vaccination?

In Europe and Central Asia, the approach countries have taken to lockdowns and vaccinations has varied given socioeconomic status and capacity to roll out vaccination plans and governmental media campaigns. While the region has more vaccines available than others vaccine hesitancy remains a significant issue.

Current rates of double vaccination in the EU average only 69% of the population with wide variation across the bloc—highs of 83% to lows of 29%.

Vaccine hesitancy remains the biggest barrier to increasing vaccination coverage in Europe and Central Asia, with one in four people expressing doubt about being vaccinated as of October 2021.  In fact, the region has the highest vaccine hesitancy rate globally. 

In many countries in the region, teachers were designated as a priority group for access to vaccines, meaning teachers often have significantly higher vaccination rates than the general population in the region. However, by November 2021 only five countries in Europe and Central Asia had teacher vaccination rates higher than 70%. Another 10 countries had rates between 30 and 70%, while two had rates lower than 30%.

More can and should be done to boost vaccination rates among teachers, but no single solution will work for all countries. The World Bank’s recent webinar on teacher vaccination in the region used a range of examples from Estonia or Italy, on ways to increase school safety. In Estonia, 85%  of teachers are vaccinated, and, most importantly, vaccination is coupled with massive testing in schools to avoid outbreaks, especially after holidays.

The European Student Union (ESU), has stressed the importance of safety measures as well as better involving students, teachers, and parents. The European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) has backed the prioritization of teachers for vaccination and has stressed the need for training to support blended learning. All the webinar presenters highlighted the main concern is preventing underrepresented children from lagging behind.

Most of the countries in the region have not imposed school lockdowns to contain the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant. Education systems in several countries extended their winter holidays but explained this as a response to the seasonal flu. It is also likely that there will be shortages of school staff, with no immediate options for finding substitutes or fill-ins. However, recent studies have shown that vaccinated people are 10 times less likely to catch the Omicron variant than unvaccinated people and are less likely to get seriously ill.

Vaccinating teachers and other essential staff at schools is thus crucial to ensuring that the region’s education systems continue to deliver learning throughout the pandemic and avoid harmful learning losses.