Impacts of Primary School Closures on Educational Inequalities
Final Report Abstract
To curb the spread of Covid-19, schools in Germany closed several times. Instead of in-person instruction, various forms of remote learning were introduced. In the first school closures, beginning in mid-March 2020, no one was fully prepared for this situation—neither schools nor families. Concerns that the absence of regular schooling would increase social inequalities in school achievement were soon raised. As children in the first grades of primary school were likely to need more support than older students due to their developmental stage, this project focused on the consequences of primary school closures. The data source was Starting Cohort 1 of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which tested the same children born in the first half of 2012 in Germany and interviewed their parents, in most cases their mother, annually since 2012/13. Almost all children attended grade 2 at the first COVID-related school closures. Overall, between 1,800 and 1,900 parents rated their ability to support their child, the digital infrastructure in their home, and a place for their child to learn after the first school closures in spring 2020 and after the school closures in winter 2020/21 as (completely) sufficient. A differentiated look at these assessments revealed that parents with higher formal education in particular rated their abilities to support their child’s learning above average. Families from the highest income quartile consistently assessed support and infrastructure higher than families from the lowest quartile. To gain insight into the consequences of school closure on achievement development, the project analyzed results from standardized mathematical tests of more than 1,500 students conducted in summer 2020 after the first school closures. Even after taking several indicators on previous achievement into account, a positive relationship between the mother’s education (only in a few cases the father’s education) and test performance were observed, which is in line with the concerns mentioned above. Test results did not differ by household income, another dimension of the family’s socio-economic status. At least two approaches offer explanations as to why the COVID-19 pandemic should increase inequalities in child development: According to the family stress model, historic events could elevate parents’ stress levels, leading to parental conflict and problematic parenting with adverse effects on child development. The family investment model, in contrast, focuses on parental support behavior and provision of material resources. Whereas mothers’ mental strain (only in a few cases were fathers interviewed) during the first COVID-19 lockdown showed a consistently negative impact on children’s performance in mathematics, different indicators of parental investment did not. Nevertheless, numeracy-related investments prior to the first school closures showed a noteworthy positive effect. A possible explanation lies in the more specific operationalization of numeracy-related activities, whereas investments during the school closures were operationalized in a domain-general way. From a theoretical point of view, however, one could also assume that the effects of investments unfold over time within a stable environment. Therefore, relatively transient investments in times of rapid change might be less effective. Sudden (historic) events, however, might have immediate impacts on stress levels, the way parents cope with them, and ultimately on child development. An unexpected finding is that the relationship between mothers’ education and children’s test results does not change after taking family stress, support behavior, and infrastructure at home into account. The family stress model is often used in research on children’s socio-emotional development, less often to explain cognitive development and educational trajectories. Given the results of this project, stratification research might benefit from considering this model more frequently.
Publications
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Die Bedeutung coronabedingter Schulschließungen für soziale Ungleichheiten in der Kompetenzentwicklung im Grundschulalter. 9. Tagung der Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung (GEBF). Bamberg/online conference
Vogelbacher, M., and Schneider, T.
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Disparities in students' mathematical skill development - The role of family stress and family investment during the COVID-19 shutdown. 2022 SLLS International Annual Conference. Cleveland, OH, USA.
Vogelbacher, M., and Schneider, T.
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The impact of the first COVID- 19 shutdown on mathematical skill development in primary school in Germany – The role of parental stress, learning support and parents' working conditions. 7th International NEPS Conference 2022, Bamberg/online conference
Vogelbacher, M., and Schneider, T.
