Analysis of the effects of COVID-19 and school closures on primary and secondary education in Italy

• Autor(a) principal: Scevola, Stefano
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/38717
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Italy, the Italian Government rapidly decided to close all non-essential activities. Schools were therefore promptly closed, and lessons took place online. The sudden and unexpected transition to the online method caused many disruptions to the normal schooling activities. In this paper, we look at their effects on students of primary and secondary education by confronting the Invalsi national tests from 2019 to 2021. At a national level we find that, on average, students from all educational levels decreased their performance. However, non-Italians, females and students with a lower educated mother were more negatively affected. Italian regions have big differences in terms of wealth, inequality and academic achievements. Moreover, different restrictive measures came into place for each region and grade leading to distinct amounts of days of school closure. We link these characteristics and differences with the percentage difference in test scores between 2019 and 2021. For secondary education we find that one day of full school closure decreases the percentage difference in test scores by 0.15 percentage points. As we write, the world is facing the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. New variants may develop in the future causing countries to consider new restrictive measures. Our results warn on the immediate negative effects that such policies on school closures may cause on students’ performances.