A new article published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour provides a detailed survey of the effects of COVID on children’s learning across 15 countries. The authors record a substantial overall learning deficit which arose early in the pandemic and persists over time. Learning deficits are particularly large among children from low socio-economic backgrounds. They are also larger in maths than in reading and in middle-income countries relative to high-income countries.
The authors suggest various methods of tackling the problem, inlcuding the use of the summer holidays to offer summer schools and learning camps, extending school days and school weeks, and organizing and scaling up tutoring programmes. Further potential lies in developing, advertising and providing access to learning apps, online learning platforms or educational TV programmes that are free at the point of use.
Below is the full citation for the article including a link to it.
Betthäuser, B.A., Bach-Mortensen, A.M. & Engzell, P. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nat Hum Behav (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01506-4
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