Children and COVID-19 Research Library

About 2 billion children were affected by school closures globally at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to documented learning losses while children were out of school, and an especially precarious future academic path for pupils in developing countries where learning and continued enrolment remain important issues. There is an urgent need to understand the extent of these learning and enrolment losses, and possible policy options to get children back on track. This paper studies the extent of learning losses and recovery in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, and provides some evidence that a full recovery is possible. Using data from a random sample of schools, we find significant learning losses of about .6 standard deviations in English and Math. However, a program designed to slow down the curriculum and cover what was missed during school closures led to a rebound within 2 months, and a recovery of all learning losses. Students who were a part of the program do not lag behind one year later and remain in school.

This study aimed to show how information delivered by teachers to parents on students’ learning progress and guidelines for active involvement in children's education can improve learning outcomes. A randomized control trial experiment in 130 primary schools in Kebumen District, Central Java, Indonesia was conducted. The implementation of the intervention collided with the school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding to the significance of this intervention to help parents in undertaking learning from home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected learning practices in Indonesia, decreasing the role of teachers as instructors and instead driving parents to replicate the classroom environment at home. Given a supportive home environment, some students, particularly those with low initial achievement, enjoyed learning gains during school closures, as parents were able to directly teach to their level. As schools reopen, students will benefit from continued additional support in their education from their household. It is also important to reintroduce a challenging curriculum to recover potential learning losses at the upper tail of the distribution

This insight note explores how COVID-19 and related school closures impacted Nigerian schools, parents, and students. National data collected by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2020 through a monthly phone survey show that children had extremely limited contact with the education system during this time, and that families preferred low-cost alternatives such as in-home tutoring and increased parental involvement in education to e-learning tools. Additional data collected by the RISE Nigeria Team in a survey of 73 low-cost private schools in Abuja suggest that some schools did maintain contact with students during mandated school closures, that students experienced absolute learning losses equivalent to about 5-6 months of school missed in other contexts (Cooper et al, 1996), despite participation in alternative learning activities, and that the pandemic led to severe financial hardships for schools and teachers.

This paper presents the findings of research undertaken in Ethiopia to examine the effects of COVID-19 school closures on children’s holistic learning, including both socio-emotional and academic learning. It draws on data collected in 2019 (prior to the pandemic) and 2021 (after schools reopened) to compare primary pupils’ learning before and after the school closures. In particular, the study adapts self-reporting scales that have been used in related contexts to measure Grade 3 and 6 children’s social skills, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and mental health and wellbeing, along with literacy and numeracy. Lesson observations were also undertaken to explore teachers’ behaviours to foster socio-emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom.