The World Bank has recently published a report in which it analyzed the impact of public school closures on students and on the Lebanese economy. In details, the World Bank revealed that children in Lebanese public schools have received a disrupted academic teaching over the 2019-2023 period, receiving only 270 days of in-person teaching instead of the 600 days they should have received over this period. Moreover, the World Bank uncovered that students at public and private schools in Lebanon lost between 1-1.2 years of learning-adjusted years of schooling (LAYS) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This translated into actual learning losses as an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) administered in Lebanon over the March-April 2022 period demonstrated that the reading comprehension scores of only 2.8% of grade 2 students were deemed at an intermediate level or above, compared to an 11.0% level over the April-May 2018 period. The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect public and private school students alike, as public schools were largely unable to implement remote learning due to a lack of resources, widening as such an already existing gap between public and private school students. In addition, the report pointed out that while private school students regularly resumed learning following the pandemic, public school teaching was hindered by a series of strikes by teachers over their severely devalued salaries following the acute devaluation of the Lebanese pound, leading to a further loss of 0.4-0.5 LAYS. This puts the actual learning adjusted years of schooling for public school students (4.6-4.9) on comparable terms with the pre-pandemic levels of Yemen (4.2), Iraq (4.0), Sierra Leone (4.9) and Guinea (4.6). Said results as per the World Bank would translate into a loss in the future earnings of affected students. In figures, and if not compensated somehow, the learning losses over the 2019-2022 period could materialize in some 10% loss of future earnings for concerned students, whilst the losses for the 2022-2023 academic year will compile another 3.2%-3.8% loss in future income, which alone would translate into losses of $217-$253 million for the Lebanese economy. In addition, the World Bank’s most conservative estimates set the economic losses of each day of public school closures at $3 million, a figure which would dwarf the circa $1.6 million a day figure (estimated by the  Minister of Education and Higher Education) required to ensure public schools remain open during the 2023-2024 academic year.