With over one billion children still out of school because of the lockdown, there is now a real and present danger that the public health crisis will create a COVID generation who lose out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged. Yet at the very time we need extra resources, education funding is under threat. This letter from over 275 world leaders calls on the G20, the IMF, the World Bank and regional development banks and all countries to recognise the scale of the crisis, and proposes three initiatives to get the most disadvantaged and vulnerable back into education and enable them to catch up.