First and foremost, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Bank would like to thank all the ministries of education, teachers, and families that have worked tirelessly to protect the learning of millions of students during the pandemic.

This report was prepared by a core team consisting of the following colleagues: UNESCO (Borhene Chakroun, Gwang-Chol Chang), UNICEF Headquarters (Suguru Mizunoya, Nicolas Reuge), UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti (Matt Brossard, Jessica Lynn Bergmann), and the World Bank (João Pedro Azevedo, Halsey Rogers, 

Ellinore Ahlgren, Marie-Helene Cloutier), under the overall guidance of Stefania Giannini, Robert Jenkins, and Jaime Saavedra. The team thanks Omar Arias, Ciro Avitabile, Luis Crouch, Laura Gregory, Shwetlena Sabarwal, Yevgeniya Savchenko, Norbert Schady, Lars Sondergaard, Nobuyuki Tanaka, Alfonso Sanchez, and Michael Crawford for their inputs and comments. The support of communication colleagues Cynthia Guttman, Ann Marie Wilcock, Kristyn Schrader-King, and Stefano De Cupis was greatly appreciated. Production assistance was provided by Nancy Vega (UNICEF). We apologize for any omissions and express our sincerest thanks to everyone, whether named here or not, who graciously gave their time and expertise.