Effects of the COVID-19 school lockdowns on language and math performance of students in elementary schools: implications for educational practice and reducing inequality

The current study investigates the effects of the school lockdowns during school years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 on the achievement scores of primary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed scores for spelling, reading fluency (i.e., decoding speed), reading comprehension, and mathematics from standardized student tracking systems for 5125 students from 26 primary schools in the urban region of The Hague, the Netherlands. Results showed that students in grades 1 through 3 had significant learning delays after the first lockdown. However, results after the second lockdown showed that most students were able to catch up, compared to students from corresponding grades of cohorts before COVID-19. The magnitude of these positive effects was mostly close to the negative effect of the first lockdown. Apparently, during the second lockdown, schools seemed better prepared and able to deliver more effective home schooling and online instruction. The hypothesis that students' learning from a low SES home environment will suffer most from the school lockdowns could only partly be confirmed. SES effects at the individual level tended to be mitigated by negative effects of SES at the school level, making SES-related differences between schools less profound. The findings of this study offer a broader perspective to evaluate the effects of long-term school closures. Implications for educational practice and issues of inequality between students are discussed.

Learning Loss in Vulnerable Student Populations After the First Covid-19 School Closure in the Netherlands

School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns about increases in educational inequality. We examined the magnitude of the impact of the first school closure for vulnerable student groups in particular. This study was conducted among 886 Grade 3 - 5 students in the Netherlands in schools serving a high percentage of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Piecewise growth analyses indicated that the school closures caused discontinuity in students' achievement growth on national standardized tests and led to an average learning loss of 2.47 months in mathematics and 2.35 in reading comprehension, exceeding the duration of the school closure. Findings suggest that school closures contribute to educational inequality and indicate which students may particularly need additional support to overcome the adverse consequences of the lockdowns.

Primary teachers’ professional learning during a COVID-19 school lockdown

Background Purpose Methods Findings Conclusions The COVID-19 crisis forced education providers around the world to cancel contact teaching in schools as part of measures to limit contact between people and to slowdown the spread of the virus. The rapid and unexpected transition to distance teaching in the beginning of the pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge for teachers and placed a significant demand on their informal professional learning. This study focused on Finnish primary teachers’ professional learning domains and activities during the first weeks of Finland’s COVID-19 school lockdown.The aim was to understand what and how primary teachers learnt during the beginning of the distance teaching period.Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with 20 Finnish primary school teachers, all of whom had been delivering distance teaching from the beginning of the lockdown, during the fourth week of the distance teaching period. Two separate qualitative analyses were undertaken.The first analysis indicated that teachers’ professional learning involved more than progress in the most self-evident and apparent technological knowledge domain: learning was also firmly connected to pedagogical knowledge and coping skills. The second analysis identified the individual learning activities, such as learning by doing, experimenting and considering one’s own teaching practice, and revealed three levels of collective learning activities (with a close colleague, in the school community and in larger online communities) carried out with the aim of improving distance teaching.The study draws attention to primary teachers’ multifaceted professional learning domains and the activities entered into during the rapid shift from contact to distance teaching. It highlights that even in emergency circumstances, teachers’ individual and collective learning processes are interrelated and supplementary to each other. Educators’ hard-earned understanding achieved in relation to distance teaching should be nurtured and refined to further benefit and support the profession. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Educational Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Closing lower secondary schools had no impact on COVID-19 incidence in 13-15-year-olds in Finland.

School lockdowns have been widely used to control the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these lockdowns may have a significant negative impact on the lives of young people. In this study, we have evaluated the impact of closing lower secondary schools for COVID-19 incidence in 13-15-year-olds in Finland, in a situation where restrictions and recommendation of social distancing were implemented uniformly in the entire country. COVID-19 case numbers were obtained from the National Infectious Disease Registry (NIDR) of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, in which clinical microbiology laboratories report all positive SARS-CoV-2 tests with unique identifiers in a timely manner. The NIDR is linked to population data registry, enabling calculation of incidences. We estimated the differences in trends between areas with both restaurant and lower secondary school closures and areas with only restaurant closures in different age groups by using joinpoint regression. We also estimated the differences in trends between age groups. Based on our analysis, closing lower secondary schools had no impact on COVID-19 incidence among 13-15-year-olds. No significant changes on COVID-19 incidence were observed in other age groups either.