TO measure the ongoing global response to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on education, Johns Hopkins University, the World Bank and UNICEF have partnered to create a Global Education Recovery Tracker on Friday. Continued disruptions to schooling and shifts in learning modalities has disrupted education for 1.6 billion children worldwide over the past year.

The tool assists countries' decision-making by tracking reopening and recovery planning efforts in more than 200 countries and territories. It captures and showcases information across status of schooling, modalities of learning (remote, in-person or hybrid), availability of remedial educational support and status of vaccine availability for teachers.

The Global Education Recovery Tracker seeks to build upon Johns Hopkins University's data on COVID-19 cases, testing and vaccinations, along with the strategic roles that the World Bank and UNICEF play in operational and policy support to countries during the pandemic.

Data through early March, 2021 show that 51 countries have fully returned to in-person education. In more than 90 countries, students are being instructed through multiple modalities, with some schools open, others closed, and many offering hybrid learning options.

Regionally, there are emerging indications of shifts in learning modalities. Remote learning continues to dominate in the Middle East and North Africa where schools were largely closed in recent weeks. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, most students are physically attending school.

In the East Asia and Pacific region, in-person education has mostly resumed, with stringent social distancing measures. The regions of South Asia, Central Asia, and Europe are mainly relying on hybrid education where the infrastructure allows.

Across Latin America, countries are using mixed approaches that include remote, hybrid, and in-person education. However, the majority of schools remain partially or fully closed to in-person classes with remote education as the most used modality.

The learning poverty rate - the proportion of 10-year-olds unable to read a short, age-appropriate text - was 53 per cent in low and middle-income countries prior to COVID-19, compared to only 9 per cent for high-income countries. A year into the pandemic, with COVID-19 related school closures, the World Bank predicts this will likely increase learning poverty to as much as 63 per cent.

In addition to tracking the operational status of schools, the tool will also monitor how students are being supported. This includes changes to the school year schedule, tutoring, and remediation, especially for the primary school grades. These interventions will be a critical component of the education recovery process after a year that has affected the learning and well-being of 95 per cent of school children across the globe.

In countries where the COVID-19 vaccine is available, the tool is tracking whether teachers are eligible as a priority group. As of early March, teachers are largely not being immunized as a priority group in low and low-middle-income countries. Of the 130 countries where vaccine information was available, more than two-thirds are not currently vaccinating teachers as a priority group.

The Tracker is intended to offer evidence that informs policy makers and researchers working on COVID-19 responses. The tool is built to have the flexibility to incorporate emerging issues while offering a time trend of actions in the past months.