Keeping children front and centre
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many of the normal patterns and behaviours of life. There has been much talk of the impact on business, tourism, health services and cultural life. One of its key disruptions has been to education and to the overall well-being and development of young people.
Now, some 20 months later, a new school year has begun but more than 100 million students globally will not be returning to education. The world is facing what has been described by the World Bank as “the worst crisis to education and learning in a century”. Internationally, some 1.5 billion students were out of school or university at the start of this year.
In responding to such realities, governments across the world need to urgently assess the impact of the pandemic on education and design and implement policies and interventions that engage with such impact.
Malta needs to address its obligations in this regard as a signatory to the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to enshrine these rights in domestic law as well as in the delivery of education. The education act, first passed into law in 1988, gives legal force to the right to education for children in...