Thread by @CarlaHaelermans

Today we published our new very important research on inequality and learning loss of Dutch primary school children due to one full year COVID-19 crisis based on the #NCO-project (Netherlands Cohort Study on Education) from @hetnro. A thread with our findings 1/21👇

Based on ~450k primary school students from ±1600 schools (±25% of total) we analysed standardized tests on reading, spelling and math that were written right before COVID-19 started (March 2020) and in March21 2/21

We compare the learning gain in the COVID-year with a similar time period in the years before. We also compare these one-year results with our previous results on the first school closure in spring 2020 3/21

The good news is that the results show that part of the learning loss that occurred during the first school closure is undone. However, on average there are still learning losses, and learning has been lower than in the years before 4/21

After one year of COVID-19 we find that students have on average 0.17 SD lower learning gain for reading, and 0.14 SD for math and 0.08SD for spelling compared with the years before the COVID-19 crisis. 5/21

Similar to our previous analysis, the learning losses are not evenly distributed over types of students and types of schools, especially for spelling and math. 6/21

Students from a low socio-economic background have about 1.5 times more learning loss for spelling, and around 2 times more learning loss for math. The difference between low and high SES students has even increased a bit since the first school closure 7/21

Similar results are found for students from single-parent families and students with 2 or more siblings. These for family structure are found on top of the effect by student socio-economic status. 8/21

Furthermore, we find large differences between schools. Most schools had on average a lower learning progress during this full year of COVID-19than in the two years before, but the differences between schools are quite large. 9/21

Students at schools with a high share of low-SES students encountered an even higher learning loss during this period and the same holds for students at smaller schools and schools in rural areas 10/21

Similar to the differences by student characteristics, school differences are also found on top of the COVID-19 effects by student individual socio-economic status. 11/21

The OLS regressions are estimated with robust standard errors clustered at the school level and are confirmed by several robustness checks, in which we, among others, control for student and school characteristics and conduct a placebo analysis. 12/21

Note that we have corrected learning gains in the COVID-year, as the tests that were taken in March 2021 were administered an average of 6 weeks later than in previous years. 13/21

Although catching up on some of the learning loss is good news, the results are still quite alarming and indicate a delay in learning progress of about 3 to 7 weeks of a school year 14/21

Also, it is worrisome that the differences between (types of) students and schools are still quite big, and that some differences have even increased (such as by student SES) over time 15/21

These results confirm once again the major contribution of schools to students’ learning gain, no distance learning or digital schooling period can replace the role of the teacher and the school. The results also imply that there is no one-size-fits-all approach… 16/21

…to make up for the learning loss. Although all students deserve attention to overcome the negative effects of the COVID-19 crisis, for some students this is more pressing than for others, especially since these groups already suffer more from inequality in education. 17/21

The English working paper underlying this thread can be found at sites.google.com/site/carlahael…. 18/21

Many thanks to the amazing team from NCO for the hard work and great teamwork: @R_vander_Velden @madelon_jacobs, @Lynn_van_Vugt, @ChayenneSmeets, Bas Aarts, Ineke Bijlsma and Sanne van Wetten. 19/21

This thread is a follow-up on a previous thread of our study on the first school closure in the Netherlands:

https://twitter.com/CarlaHaelermans/status/1374447206669819907

20/21

In the upcoming period we will publish more of these results, the next one in fall 2021 with analyses of the effects of a 1.5 years COVID-19 crisis. Stay tuned! 21/21