{"id":15181860,"date":"2021-03-10T02:32:34","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T19:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opendevelopmentmekong.net\/?page_id=15181860"},"modified":"2021-03-10T09:24:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T02:24:50","slug":"section-2-the-impact-of-school-closures-in-the-region","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/opendevelopmentmekong.net\/education-and-covid-19-in-the-mekong-region\/section-2-the-impact-of-school-closures-in-the-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Section 2: The impact of school closures in the region"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Children at school in Lao PDR prior to the pandemic. Photo by Asian Development Bank via Flickr<\/a>. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Overview<\/a>\r\n
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Long-standing issues have impacted the education systems of the Mekong region. At the core, the systems themselves are poor, from the infrastructure to the materials to the teacher training and capacity, particularly in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar. Not all schools have handwashing facilities and electricity, and learning resources – textbooks, pencils, and notebooks – are also often lacking. Available textbooks are outdated. Natural disasters have exacerbated these inequalities, destroying infrastructure and learning resources.1<\/a><\/sup> Even in the relatively more prosperous countries of the Mekong region like Thailand, the issue remains; decades of Bangkok-centred economic growth has translated into wide variance of resource availability across the country’s 77 provinces.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\r\n