Anybody who needs another reason to keep the schools open should take a look at the results of this OECD study.
At least $1.7 Trillion long term cost for Canada and climbing because children missed school. That works out to be a $23.7 billion loss for NL.
It looked at the G20 and estimated the cost to the long term income of the students who lost part of their school year due to C19. Past economic downturns and disruptions have shown that 1/3 of a year’s loss of education reduces a person’s income by around 3% over their lifetime. We will not see this quickly but over time it will add up. This study noted but did not take into account social-emotional and motivational development from being with their peers. As well early childhood development was noted but not factored in which can also be very important in long-term outcomes. It also did not look at the losses to university and college-aged adults, which is another group hit extremely hard. This also does not take into account the possible shortage of job opportunities that the pandemic will inevitably cause. This table shows the loss to each countries GDP till the end of the century in $billions. based on 1/3 of a year loss (Which all NL children lost). The cost to Canada in CAD will be at least $1.7 Trillion Dollars. It showed the fact that online learning meant a very ineffective learning process and that children immersed themselves even more into videogames and online media. There are corrective measures that the study suggests including adopting more of a one on one customized learning within schools. As well as possibly provincial-wide subsidized tutoring from university students and advanced high school students to help students catch up. Another thing it mentions is to keep the exams and testing going to try and keep the bar as high as possible and have benchmarks to be able to compare results against. If you want to read the study it can be found here http://www.oecd.org/…/The-economic-impacts-of…