Schools did not all shut down on a single global date, but for most countries the big wave of COVID school closures hit in March 2020 , with the peak around mid‑to‑late March.

Quick Scoop

  • The very first known COVID‑related school closure in the U.S. was February 27, 2020 , when Bothell High School in Washington shut for deep cleaning after a possible exposure.
  • Ohio became the first U.S. state to announce a statewide K‑12 closure on March 12, 2020 , and more than a dozen states followed within a day.
  • By March 25, 2020 , all U.S. public school buildings were closed for in‑person instruction, affecting over 50 million public school students.
  • Globally, March 2020 is when closures really cascaded: by March 20 , more than 70% of the world’s learners were affected by national closures, and by March 27 , nearly 90% of students worldwide were out of class.
  • At the height of closures in April 2020 , UNESCO estimated about 1.6 billion learners in over 200 countries were impacted by national shutdowns.

In short: schools began shutting in late February 2020, but for most people around the world it felt like everything closed in the second half of March 2020.

TL;DR: Schools started shutting for COVID in late February 2020, but the mass wave of closures that affected most students happened from about March 11–25, 2020 , with nearly the entire world’s student population out of classrooms by early April.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.