UNICEF and Haitian education authorities released a series of reports in the fall of 2019 attempting to quantify the devastating impact of the year’s crisis on school enrollment and attendance, documenting a situation that represented one of the worst setbacks to educational access in recent Haitian history. The numbers told a story of a generation whose educational development had been severely disrupted at precisely the age when consistent schooling was most critical.
National enrollment figures showed significant drops from the previous year, with the steepest declines in the poorest communities and in urban areas most directly affected by the protests and lockdowns. School fees that families could not afford as their incomes collapsed were a major driver of non-enrollment; security concerns that prevented children from traveling to school safely were another.
For the students who were enrolled, attendance was intermittent. Schools that opened and closed based on daily security conditions could not provide the consistent instruction that learning required. Teachers who arrived to find half their students missing had to make impossible decisions about how to pace their curriculum.
The consequences for older students facing national examinations were particularly acute. The baccalaureate examination, which serves as the gateway to university and professional opportunity in Haiti, required sustained preparation that the year’s disruptions had made nearly impossible to achieve. Educational organizations called for emergency measures to support examination preparation and consider how to evaluate students fairly given the extraordinary circumstances they had faced.