Dikhyaa Mohanty 
World Bank’s Global Education Director Jaime Saavedra stated that there is no justification to keep schools closed now even if new waves of COVID-19 pandemic keep hitting us.
According to the reports, Saavedra and his team have been tracking COVID’s impact on the education sector, and feel there is no evidence that reopening schools has caused a surge in coronavirus cases and that schools are not a safe place.
Schools in several countries have been shut for the better part of two years since the pandemic broke in March 2020. Some educational institutions were reopened towards the end of 2020 but were closed following the Delta-driven wave last year and again now after the Omicron variant led to a massive surge in India and several other countries.
Saavedra stated that there is no relation between opening schools and spread of coronavirus and there is no evidence linking the two and there is no justification now to keep the schools closed. Even if there are new waves of COVID-19, closing schools should be the last resort. He asserted that it does not make sense to wait till children are vaccinated as there is “no science” behind that thinking.
“During 2020, we were navigating in a sea of ignorance. We just didn’t know what was the best way of combating the pandemic and the immediate reaction of most countries in the world was let’s close schools. Time has passed since then and with evidence coming in from late 2020 and 2021, we have had several waves and there are several countries which have opened schools,” Saavedra said.
