International study shows multiple impacts of Covid-19 school closures on teenagers’ wellbeing
An international study, has revealed multiple impacts of the Covid-19 school closures on the wellbeing of teenagers and the potential for widening inequalities.
Led by the UNESCO Chair ‘Global Health and Education’, which is jointly hosted by the University of Huddersfield and the University of Clermont Auvergne in France, the research was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The researchers confused 60 interviews in six languages with education and health professions across 28 countries during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic amid school closures and re-openings in 2021.
Titled Multiple Impacts on Adolescent Well-Being During COVID-19 School Closures: Insights From Professionals for Future Policy Using a Conceptual Framework, the report shares that school closures impacted teenagers’ health and nutrition, connectedness, safety, learning, and agency/resilience.
School closures also also found to have widened inequalities for some groups of students and disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable.
The study concludes that education policies must see schools as infrastructure that supports multiple aspects of adolescent wellbeing and not just a teaching-learning system. The authors also argue that during pandemic recovery, strategics focused on adolescent wellbeing, and not just educational outcomes, are needed.
