While students in 770 public schools across the country resumed classes on Wednesday, October 21, following the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on October 9, in the central provinces the school bell is far from ringing. Behind the image of normality projected by the reopening of the country, a deep fracture is hidden: 619 schools suffered damage and 35 were completely destroyed or unusable. This has left more than 3,000 children without a classroom just a month and a half before the end of the school year, in a system that had already suffered almost 500 days of losses in face-to-face classes following the pandemic crisis and the teachers’ protests of recent years.
A technical report and a public policy proposal prepared by Youth United for Education and the Foundation for Economic and Social Development of Panama (Fudespa) reveals the dramatic situation for students, mostly from Herrera, Veraguas, Los Santos and Coclé. The destruction was particularly harsh in the rural areas of the interior. Part of what the document reflects is that the earthquake did not strike a healthy system, but one where the majority of students were already attending classes below the level corresponding to their grade. In the country, only 16% of young people reached the minimum level of competence in mathematics on the 2022 PISA tests, and 42% in reading.
The Dilemma of the Multi-Grade Classroom.
The 35 schools that collapsed shared the same profile: they were public, rural, difficult to access, and operated under the multi-grade system.
1,954
The number of multigrade schools in the country.
104 Thousand
Number of students served in multi-grade schools.
3,000
The number of students affected from these schools, after the earthquake.
Another relevant factor is that in remote communities, distance or virtual education has not been a viable alternative due to a lack of connectivity and equipment. However, the small size of these schools (many with between 10 and 25 students) also represents their greatest strength for recovery. The analysis considers that this system allows community classrooms to be set up within 10 days in communal houses, churches or temporary structures so as not to interrupt the educational link. The government has not yet said what it will do in those areas and what the medium and long-term plan might be to support the students.
The Step-By-Step Process After the Earthquake.
The proposal from Jóvenes Unidos por la Educación (Youth United for Education) and Fudespa goes beyond simply restoring physical spaces. It also aims to reorganize the return to classes to address the emotional consequences of the earthquake and prevent the emergency from exacerbating learning gaps. The first step would be to dedicate the first two weeks of return to social and emotional support, without formal assessments. School routines, play, and expressing experiences would be prioritized during this period, while teachers would receive rapid training in psychological first aid to provide initial support and refer serious cases to specialists.
Restoring a sense of security would also be part of the process. The report proposes practicing the “drop, cover, and hold on” protocol as a tool for students to regain confidence, rather than associating drills with a new threat. For the end of the 2026 school year, the proposal includes quickly assessing each student’s reading and math level. Before November 6, an oral test of about 10 minutes should be administered to each student, with the purpose of organizing the children according to their performance level and not solely by the grade they are in. Based on that diagnosis, teachers would prioritize the fundamental learning necessary for the following school year.
Each student’s grade would be the most favorable between the average of the first two trimesters and the result of the third, with the aim of preventing a student from repeating the year due to the consequences of the disaster.
Academic recovery would not end with the closing of the school calendar. For January and February 2027, the report proposes organizing a voluntary summer school, with four to six weeks of sessions dedicated to small group tutoring and academic support in the affected areas. In communities where schools are not ready by March 2027, the proposal includes installing safe modular classrooms and publishing a reconstruction schedule that allows people to know the deadlines for the works. For schools that need to be rebuilt, it also proposes applying strict seismic standards, developing risk maps for each school, and incorporating disaster management into the national curriculum. The challenge – according to the measures proposed in the report – is not only to return students to the classroom, but to prevent the earthquake from resulting in a further loss of learning for a generation that was already facing setbacks.
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