School closings prompted by coronavirus have affected more than 1.5 billion students worldwide
The coronavirus has disrupted schooling for more than 87% of the world's student population, UNESCO says.
UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—says that as of March 25, the pandemic has led 165 countries to close all their schools. That equates to 1,524,648,768 students, or 87.1% of the world's student population.
Several other countries have carried out localized school closures and, should these closures become nationwide, millions of additional learners will experience education disruption, UNESCO says.
In the United States, all but three states—Maine, Nebraska and Iowa—have closed all their public schools as of March 26, Education Week reports.
School closures attributed to coronavirus have affected at least 124,000 U.S. public and private schools. That translates to at least 55.1 million of the 56.6 million public and private school students in the United States
There are at least 98,000 public schools and at least 34,000 private schools in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Those schools educate almost 50.8 million public school students and 5.8 million private school students.
