Like some 890,000 other pupils, eight-year-old Brithany has not been to class in a year in Panama, the country with the most missed in-person school days due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Brithany attends an occasional online lesson on the prepaid cellphone of her single mother, Milena Mendosa, who works two jobs cleaning houses and selling wares at a market.
On some days, the online classes get canceled. On others, the cellphone network cannot handle the traffic, and Brithany ends up playing instead of learning.
According to UNICEF, the United Nation’s children agency, schools in 14 countries have remained largely closed since March 2020, two-thirds of them in Latin America …
Keep on reading: No class for a year: COVID-19 worsens Latin American inequality