This paper reviews evidence from the before the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the vital evidence that has emerged since the beginning of the pandemic, to arrive at an approach and model for understanding the impact of the pandemic on a vital human development indicator, namely attainment of learning proficiency among children and adolescents. This is not the only attempt to do this, and comparisons were made to other analyses of a similar nature. In the coming months and years, much more analytical work will emerge. Key unknowns currently are, firstly, the relationship between contact time lost by children and learning losses, especially in developing countries and, secondly, the ability of schooling systems to ‘catch up’, or accelerate learning so that there can be a return to historical levels of learning.