$15 trillion loss to hit U.S. economy as school closures linger on

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental economic organization, has predicted that continued interruption to children’s schools in the U.S. due to the coronavirus pandemic could lead to $15.3 economic loss in gross domestic product.

The giant economic organization’s projection indicates that there would be about 1.5% decline in global economic growth which could last until the end of the century.

According the organization, U.S. students’ loss of skill is one-tenth of a standard deviation, stating that the students would after all return to their previous levels.

The projection is in larger part centered on skills loss and how it directly connects with global economy.

In a paper published on Tuesday September, 8, 2020, the organization, in its estimation stated that with classroom closed down causing loss of skills for children, productivity is at the receiving end.

While emphasizing that the current group of students would be most affected, the organization said, school closure would result in huge total cost of missed classes which would amount to about 69% of the current GDP for the country.

It further said that there is higher possibility that economic growth could suffer more losses if schools are not quick to reopen or return to the pre-pandemic mode of operations and performance.

Since the emergence of the coronavirus, homeschooling has become the order of the day for a larger number of children.

Although, there is an exception of key workers’ children to whom few schools remain open.

However, educators have expressed concerns over the wide learning gap that the new way of children learning could have created as a result of the pandemic.

During the period of homeschooling, educators have made collaborative efforts to keep learning going with teachers making necessary adjustment to the ways teaching used to be conducted and settling into the new-normal learning environment.

With the pandemic still much around, the organization recommended that government should encourage remote learning by providing necessary infrastructure to limit challenges currently imposed on education by the pandemic.

“There are evident benefits to students in expanding their learning time and opportunities beyond the school gate by being able to learn using a variety of distance learning approaches,” the organization suggested.