Study on Corona school closings: children have learned "little or nothing"

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Schoolgirl during digital lessons via the network (symbolic image)

Photo: Frédéric Cirou / imago images / PhotoAlto

Three social and educational scientists at Oxford University have drawn a sobering conclusion about the school closings in the Netherlands during the corona crisis.

Despite the online lessons, the students learned "little or nothing," according to a new study by the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science.

The results showed "that online teaching was largely ineffective during the lockdown, even in a country well equipped to meet the challenges of online teaching," the authors write.

The situation in the Dutch education system is much better than in many other countries and therefore actually a "best case" scenario: The Netherlands has one of the world's highest Internet access rates, there was only a relatively short lockdown of eight weeks in the spring, and that is first wave of the pandemic in the country was relatively mild.

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"In spite of these good conditions, the progress of the students declined significantly, which points to even greater losses in countries that are less well prepared for the challenges of online teaching," the analysis said.

The main results:

• The children and young people achieved

  an average of 20 percent less

  than the expected learning progress - this corresponded to the time when the schools could not offer face-to-face lessons.

  "In other words, the students made little or no progress in studying from home," says co-author Per Engzell.

• Social and economic factors

  exacerbate the situation: "For children from disadvantaged backgrounds, the effects were even more devastating," according to the researchers.

  If the parents did not have a university education, the loss of knowledge was up to 50 percent greater than for children from academic families.

For the study, the researchers used the test results of around 350,000 Dutch schoolchildren between the ages of seven and eleven.

There are central performance tests twice a year in the Netherlands;

the surveys took place in January / February and May / June 2020.

The current data from before and after the school closings were also compared with results from previous school years.

"Of particular concern"

"The results of the study are particularly worrying as the Netherlands got so many things right," says co-author Arun Frey: Teachers and school officials have "made an enormous effort and the government has even bought laptops for all children who need one" .

Even so, the results of the online teaching confirmed "many of the worst fears educators had at the start of the initial lockdown".

However, the researchers conclude that it is still unclear whether the measured gaps in knowledge are a permanent problem or just a temporary setback.

It is clear, however, "that small losses can lead to major disadvantages over time if no suitable measures are taken," says author Mark Verhagen.

In a study, the Munich-based Ifo Institute had also warned of loss of income in working life among schoolchildren whose schools were closed for a long time during the corona crisis.

"If about a third of a school year is lost, this is accompanied by an average of around three to four percent lower earned income over the entire working life," predicts Ludger Wößmann, head of the Ifo Center for the Economics of Education.

According to UN estimates, around 95 percent of schoolchildren worldwide are affected by school closings.

The corona crisis has thus led to the largest interruption in education in history.

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