Education plays a critical role in national development, at individual and societal levels. The disruption wrought by the pandemic ought to be reviewed, analysed, and understood so as to provide evidence-informed policy solutions to the resulting complex, critical problems that Jamaica faces. This report provides an evidence- informed account of what has happened to education, and to children, in the wave of the pandemic-induced school closures and the shift to remote teaching and learning. It does not seek to evaluate the education sector beyond what pertains directly to this unforeseen, singular, unpredictable, fluid event, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before March 2020, the global tourism industry was in a pre-pandemic boom with continued growth projected for the Caribbean region. Categorised as one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world, the tourist industry is acknowledged as a powerful catalyst for Social-economic development. In 2019, the sector contributed, directly and indirectly, a third of the region’s GDP. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the projected growth to a sudden halt due to the widespread COVID-19 containment measures resulting in the closure of borders, restricted movement, and the prioritisation of public health.

Despite the financial investment in social interventions for at- risk youth over the last several decades in Jamaica, the extent to which those interventions are effective is questionable as there has not been a noticeable nor sustained impact on the high rates of youth involved violence. Anti-violence interventions over the world, such as those that target at-risk youth to change their behaviour and divert them from violent crime, are designed and implemented because they seem to make obvious sense that they will work, but there is no basis for assessing the interventions’ effectiveness or outcomes. This weakness in monitoring and evaluating anti-violence social interventions, and the problem of not knowing their outcomes and whether or not they “work” has been recognized in Jamaica for at least two decades.

The socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Caribbean are non-neutral, affecting some persons and entities more than others, with vulnerable groups including children, youth, women and girls, the poor, informal sector workers and small businesses, being among the hardest hit. To curb the rapid transmission of the disease Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) – full and partial border closures, lockdowns, curfews etc. – have been adopted and are still in place (to varying extents) by governments in the Caribbean, and around the world. NPIs, while contributing to reduced transmission of the disease have destabilised social and economic activity, producing negative effects for many, with worse impacts for vulnerable groups, as their pre-existing susceptibility to socio- economic shocks limited their capacity to cope with the effects of the pandemic.