LA PAZ/SAO PAULO, June 24 (Reuters) – In the Bolivian mountain town of La Paz, the children of Maribel Sanchez have spent much of the past two years huddled on a small smartphone screen to take online lessons amid a long lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The two boys, aged 11 and 8, frequently missed lessons when their schedules clashed because the family did not have a computer. Bolivian school children only finally returned to in-person classes in March this year, with many still not full-time.

The story echoes across the region, from Mexico to Brazil.

Latin America has one of the worst records of school closures in the world, according to a World Bank report, which shows that children here have faced nearly 60 weeks of full or partial schooling closed between March 2020 and March this year.

This is behind only South Asia and double the level of Europe, Central and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Pacific. In North America, there were long partial shutdowns, but only seven weeks of full shutdowns compared to 29 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It threatens to set a generation of children in the region back a decade, some experts say, in terms of education levels, which is weighing on incomes and job prospects for years to come.

“With virtual classes, the little ones didn’t learn anything. They were distracted. My son, who is in first grade, didn’t learn anything. Nothing!” Sanchez said while waiting to pick up her children outside a school in La Paz.

World Bank researcher Emanuela di Gropello said schoolchildren in Latin America would see a 12% drop in lifetime earnings due to education gaps during the pandemic.

“These young people entering the workforce will essentially see a long-term drop in their wages,” she said.

In Argentina, Mercedes Porto of the Fundacion Cimientos, which works with young people, said the school system had “lost” a cohort of students with some 1 million young people not returning to school after the schooling period. Virtual.

Andres Uzin Pacheco, education expert and academic director of a business school in La Paz, said the impact would be long-lasting and severe.

“This locked-in generation is going to suffer the consequences, not just for five years, but for the next 20 or 30 years, which involves all of their education, even academics, and their professional lives,” he said.

Reporting by Steven Grattan and Monica Machicao; Additional reporting by Horacio Soria; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Lisa Shumaker

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.