The World Bank estimates that school closures from COVID-19 will reduce the average learning that a student achieves over their lifetime by more than half of a school year (from 7.9 years to 7.3 years). This will result in a 5 percent reduction in annual earnings each year, and a predicted 4.5 million or more students who may never return to school due to the income shock of the pandemic alone. Negative impacts from school closures will be significantly higher for marginalized populations, such as adolescents with disabilities and those living in or forcibly displaced from fragile contexts.

This brief provides an overview of approaches to sustain the delivery of school health and nutrition services described above and targeted to adolescents in periods of school closure, while presenting considerations for the resumption of school-based service delivery upon reopening.

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