Multinational review of the long-term effects on education after pandemics

The United Nations submitted a report in 2021 that showed literacy rates around the world have fallen to rates similar to those of twenty years ago. The United Nations concluded the COVID-19 pandemic was at fault for the sudden drop in literacy in 2020. This drop will lead to learning delays and social problems. The goal of this research paper is to understand the long-term effects of pandemics in education and how that alters the educational development of those who were in primary school at the time of the pandemic. The result of this research will act as a guide to countries that are recovering from the COVID-19. Investigating this topic will contribute to the understanding of long-term educational impacts by clearly outlining the specific COVID-19 related issues in education and offering plausible solutions. Because COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic, historical pandemics, like H1N1 in 1918 and H2N2 in 1957, will be used to measure the lingering effects pandemics have on education. As pandemics are global issues, sample countries have been selected for research; these countries are Kenya, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, and the United States. These countries were selected for differences in region, GDP, and pre-existing literacy rates in each of them. This study will measure the rates of literacy pre-and post- pandemic to see the rate of change, how long it took to return to pre-pandemic literacy rates, and what actions were most effective in the return to pre-pandemic literacy rates.