Millions of children out of school because of coronavirus in the world’s poorest countries may never go back, expert says

As countries around the world start to reopen their economies and consider how to safely reopen schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, international development experts say they are worried that tens of millions of students in the world’s poorest nations may never go back to class.

Alice Albright, chief executive of the Global Partnership for Education, said that the combination of the coronavirus crisis, economic weakness and unrest in some places will affect millions of young people who are out of school and that many will probably not return because of the costs and family pressures on them to work. Girls, she said, will be the most severely affected.