News and Research 232

Realizing the returns to schooling: How COVID-19 and school closures are threatening women’s economic future | COVID-19 is threatening the gains being made in girls’ education. Urgent action is needed to ensure that girls and women can realize the returns to their schooling | Returns to schooling for women are high – so says Bono and the research. A couple of years ago, in an essay in Time magazine Bono wrote: Give girls just one additional year of schooling and their wages go up almost 12 percent…

Promoting Social Inclusion in Kazakhstan through Community Engagement – A Beauty Salon | Since 2017, the Youth Corps project (ZHAS) has brought together thousands of youth initiatives from different parts of Kazakhstan. By 2019, ZHAS had supported 9,800 young people and provided nearly 3,000 grants. While some initiatives focus on environmental issues like waste management, recycling, and pollution, others deal with unemployment, entrepreneurship, healthy lifestyle, journalism, and cultural heritage. The grants are mainly focused on building strong communities and social development. Launched in partnership with the World Bank and the Kazakh Ministry of Education and Science, the project has achieved remarkable results in supporting youth in their employment and professional development.

Social inequalities overtake climate change in EU citizens’ concerns – poll| Reducing poverty and social inequality has become the main policy priority for EU citizens after the COVID-19 pandemic, a new survey commissioned by the European Parliament has shown.

It takes a curfew: The effect of Covid-19 on female homicides| Gunes Asik | Efsan Nas Ozen | Gender-based violence is a global phenomenon threatening women irrespective of race, nationality, education or socio-economic status. Evidence shows that domestic violence help calls have been increasing in many countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the effect on female homicides, this extreme form of violence, is not clear.

South Korea donates smart robots to kindergartens in Uzbekistan | South Korea granted 275 robots and 350 teaching aids to preschool educational organizations of Uzbekistan. The handover ceremony for Albert and Genibot smart robots, designed to teach children robotics and programming skills, took place on February 9. This was reported to Gazeta.uz by the press service of the Ministry of Preschool Education (MDO).

Der Schulausfall wird zur Billionen-Bombe (The school dropout becomes a billion dollar bomb) | Researchers agree: long school failures can hardly be made up, the consequences not only burden those affected, but also the economy and society. But the authorities don’t want to know about it.

Covid-19 school closures are widening Europe’s class divisions | While no one is ever truly ready for lockdown, wealthier students and schools are at an advantage.

Collaboration or competition? Evaluating the impact of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) on public school enrolment| The study estimates the causal impact of introducing a public private partnership school in close proximity to a public school on public school enrolment in Punjab. Enrolment in neighboring public schools reduces by 3 percent less than one year after establishing a PPP school.

Measuring early childhood development among 4-6 year olds: The identification of psychometrically robust items across diverse contexts | The last 15 years have seen an explosion of measurement tools for assessing the development of young children in low- and middle- income countries. This paper builds on and contributes to that literature by identifying a core set of caregiver-report items and a core set of direct assessment items that measure key developmental domains for children aged 4 – 6 years.

Ukraine 30. Coronavirus: Challenges and Responses | I joined the panel moderated by Oksana Gutsait, Education in 2021, which included Serhyi Shkarlet (Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine), Serhiy Babak (Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Science and Innovation), Serhii Koleboshyn (Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, All-Ukrainian Online School educator), Ivan Prymachenko (Educational platform Prometheus) and Vasyl Dyakiv (Teacher of the Year). My presentation on Facebook in English and Ukrainian, and on YouTube. (Press: El Banco Mundial evalúa las pérdidas económicas de Ucrania por el cierre de escuelas.)

My presentation on the COVID-19 Cost of School Closures at the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States (ABEGS) seminar.