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Let Us Continue Learning
Let Us Continue Learning
Malagasy adolescents face severe challenges in accessing and completing basic education. Among those students who complete the primary cycle, one in four does not transition into lower secondary school. Economic constraints among vulnerable households coupled with low-quality education result in widespread dropout and poor learning outcomes. Acknowledging these multidimensional barriers, UNICEF Madagascar leveraged funds from the Let us Learn (LUL) programme to implement a two-pronged strategy to support Malagasy children in accessing and continuing lower secondary school. The Catch-up Classes provide out-of-school adolescents with a learning pathway to build the foundational literacy and numeracy skills they need to resume studying in formal school. Conditional cash transfers target families with children who are at risk of abandoning school after completing the primary cycle. This brief builds on programme monitoring data, impact evaluations and qualitative insights from the field to highlight lessons learnt and actionable recommendations for accessing and continuing vulnerable children’s secondary education.
Reimagining Migration Responses
Reimagining Migration Responses
A growing number of children and young people worldwide are migrating in search of a better life. In 2019, 33 million migrants were under 18. They decide to leave for various reasons – from job prospects, to joining loved ones, to ensuring their own safety. Despite its pervasiveness, legal restrictions often deny people safe ways of migrating. In the Horn of Africa, migration has long been a key coping strategy. Recently however, migration has been framed in terms of risk rather than opportunity. UNICEF’s new research captures the experiences of 1,290 migrant children and young people in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somaliland and Puntland to help paint a more accurate picture of migration in the region. This will in turn help ensure that they are better protected and supported.
Social Benefits and the Feedback Effect of Child Poverty
Social Benefits and the Feedback Effect of Child Poverty
This paper examines how social benefits contributed to reducing the scarring effects of monetary poverty among children in European countries in the years following the Great Recession. Based on the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions database, our findings highlight that social benefit functions differ in their ability to reduce the risk of monetary poverty for children with previous experience in poverty. While family/children’s benefits are crucial in reducing child poverty in general, they are not significant in terms of reducing the scarring effects of child poverty. Old age/ survivors’ benefits meanwhile appear to be a significant support for children with prior experience in poverty. Empirical evidence thus suggests the effectiveness of social transfers to combat occasional child poverty does not always coincide with their effectiveness in preventing children from remaining in poverty year after year.
Implications of COVID-19 for Low-cost Private Schools
Implications of COVID-19 for Low-cost Private Schools
At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures disrupted the education of approximately 1.5 billion students in over 190 countries – 1 in 4 of whom were enrolled in private schools. The economic shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit low-cost private schools (LCPS) especially hard. LCPS have found themselves under significant financial stress; teachers have reported losing their jobs, having their salaries cut, or not being paid at all. Thousands of LCPS have already shut down, and thousands more are on the brink of permanent closures. LCPS also struggled to provide remote learning support to their students, and the likelihood of extensive learning losses among returning students is significant. This education market disruption poses a risk to the continuity of learning for millions of children, especially those from households at the bottom of the pyramid, who are more likely to attend low-cost private schools than high-fee private schools. Governments have stewardship of the whole education system, not just public schools; therefore, any public policy that does not mitigate against COVID-induced risks to private provision will be incomplete. This brief provides an overview of the scope of this education market disruption, particularly its implications for LCPS operators, learners and teachers, as well as the spillover effects on public schools. The brief also examines the underlying factors that affect the resilience of LCPS to shocks, and concludes with some key policy considerations for the short- and medium-term.
It’s Not Too Late to Act on Early Learning
It’s Not Too Late to Act on Early Learning
This paper presents a new estimate that pre-primary school closures in 2020 may cost today’s young children US$1.6 trillion in lost earnings over their lifetimes. Children in middle-income countries will be most greatly affected. However, most low- and middle- income countries are leaving pre-primary education out of their responses to COVID-19. This paper also draws lessons from evaluations of accelerated, bridging and remedial programmes on how introducing or expanding these transition programmes in the early years can mitigate the long-term impact on learning from pre-primary school closures.
Annual Report 2020
Annual Report 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic dominated the landscape for UNICEF Innocenti’s work in 2020, bringing both opportunities and disruptions. The pandemic has underscored the power of utilizing research and evidence in addressing crisis and uncertainty, and in finding solutions to tough global challenges. Opportunities emerged in the shape of a Rapid Research Response to assess the pandemic’s impact on children, utilizing evidence syntheses, rapid assessment tools and agile communication modalities. In turn, thousands of users were empowered to gain access to UNICEF Innocenti’s research, knowledge management, ethical advice and convening power.
Lifting Barriers to Education During and After COVID-19
Lifting Barriers to Education During and After COVID-19
By the end of 2019, 4.8 million refugees and migrants had left Venezuela – making it the largest external displacement crisis in the region’s recent history. Of these, 1 in 4 was a child. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, since November 2020, 137 million girls and boys are missing out on their education due to the prolonged closure of schools during COVID-19. The implications are troubling, especially for migrant and refugee children, for whom access to inclusive and equitable education remains a major challenge. This study collates evidence from Latin America, the Caribbean and across the world to gain a better understanding of the multifaceted linkages between education and migration. It estimates gaps in educational outcomes; identifies structural barriers to education; and highlights promising practices to inform policy.
Adolescent Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence Report
Adolescent Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence Report
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) promotes the right of young children and adolescents to participate in decision-making in policies, processes and practices that affect their lives. UNICEF and its partners have accumulated considerable experience with ways to engage adolescents and encourage their active participation in decision-making to realise these rights. Building on its accumulated expertise, UNICEF is developing a children's rights perspective in the rapidly-emerging sphere of artificial intelligence (AI). This document reports on workshops conducted in 2020 with 245 adolescents in five countries. It includes the adolescents' views and aspirations on AI; the nature of their experiences with AI; and their opinions on how they understand the risks and opportunities that AI presents in their lives. It features key messages that emerged from these consultations and the methods employed to engage adolescents in dialogue on AI. An appendix provides a selection of adolescent views on AI in their own words. The workshops with adolescents are part of the broader AI for Children Project led by the UNICEF Office of Global Insight and Policy. The adolescents’ voices, combined with consultations with experts around the world, shaped the development of a draft Policy Guidance on AI for Children. The guidance is aimed at governments and businesses to help them create AI policies and systems that are child-centred.
Multidimensional Child Poverty in Montenegro
Multidimensional Child Poverty in Montenegro
Efforts to measure poverty among children have traditionally relied on calculations of household income. But it has become clear that such a one-dimensional approach is inadequate for understanding the depth, breadth and consequences of child poverty. This report takes a different, far more nuanced, approach. As a study of multidimensional poverty, it explores the various ways in which poverty is manifested among Montenegro’s children – affecting their health, education, safety and future human development. The approach, developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF and its Office of Research - Innocenti, is known as a ‘Multidimensional Overlapping Deprivation Analysis’. Using data from surveys designed to measure the situation of children and households, it identifies the different ways that children experience poverty and how these overlap, creating a series of obstacles that prevent children from fulfilling their rights as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), acceded to by Montenegro on 23 October 2006.
A fiduciary approach to child data governance
A fiduciary approach to child data governance
This work is part of UNICEF's Good Governance of Children's Data project. Children’s data rights, like children themselves, often require supervision. Nearly every system that creates value or risk also creates ways to participate in that system, explicitly or implicitly. In data and algorithmic systems, defining and sharing data inputs both add value and politics. Social media systems often give users some amount of control over other users’ behaviour – whether as a direct moderator, a sharer, or reporting abuse. And, of course, buying stock in a digital platform company may entitle a person to recoup financial value, and, in some systems, decision-making authority. In each of these examples, the underlying systems vary, but they are shaped by the decisions, resources, and participation of large numbers of people – people who have a legal obligation to have the authority to consent, or in the case of children, to have the consent of an authorized, approving adult. The primary difference between children’s data governance and general data governance is the presumption that children are not able to effectively represent their own interests. Nearly every modern conception of data rights and governance focuses on locating the responsibility for decisions – privacy, data protection, even the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), all use models of consent and public interest – to justify data sharing. And, just as in the physical world children, especially those who fall under the age limits for data rights laws, cannot legally directly consent to the agreements that form the basis of the legitimacy of the digital world. Children are not the only group of people who cannot represent their own interests in the way that data rights are created, shared and used to shape the world on their behalf.
Continuing learning for the most vulnerable during COVID-19
Continuing learning for the most vulnerable during COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every aspect of society. In mid-April 2020, 192 countries had closed their schools, putting 9 out of 10 enrolled children out of school. These closures disproportionately affected marginalized children, worsening existing inequities across education systems worldwide. This brief draws on the experience of five UNICEF education country programmes supported by the Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative, to document tangible lessons in adapting education programmes to support the most marginalized children during school and learning centre closures. The evidence in this brief stems from a series of semi-structured interviews with Education and Child Protection specialists, as well as a document review of available COVID-19 response studies, in the five LUL-supported UNICEF Country Offices.
Investigating Risks and Opportunities for Children in a Digital World
Investigating Risks and Opportunities for Children in a Digital World
Children’s lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies. Yet, when it comes to understanding the long-term effects of internet use and online experiences on their well-being, mental health or resilience, the best we can do is make an educated guess. Our need for this knowledge has become even more acute as internet use rises during COVID-19. This report explores what has been learned from the latest research about children’s experiences and outcomes relating to the internet and digital technologies. It aims to inform policy-makers, educators, child-protection specialists, industry and parents on the best evidence, and it proposes a future research agenda.
