The uphill battle: The amplifying effects of negative trends in test scores, COVID-19 school closures and teacher shortages

This paper investigates the education outcomes at the end of primary ed ucation in the presence of multiple shocks. Using the exact same formative test since 2019, we document how learning deficits accumulate over time due to existing negative trends in a school system and the amplifying effects of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing the standardised test data at school level from the Flemish region of Belgium before and after the school closures suggests that in three years’ time the grade 6 school education outcomes decreased on average by -0.47 SD in the Dutch language, -0.31 SD in the French foreign language, -0.12 SD in mathematics, -0.11 SD in science and remained the same in social sciences. At student level, the estimates present the same significance and direction of the sign, although with lower magnitude. The learning deficits seem to accelerate over time, partly driven by the weak performance of the best-performing students, and exacerbated in schools with high shares of teacher shortages. Controlling for time varying and school fixed effects, one percentage point increase in unfilled vacancies is associated with a a decrease of -0.04 SD in the Dutch language, and -0.05 SD in math pro ficiency. Summer schools seem to mitigate part of the learning deficits. The within-school inequality in test scores has not been reduced since the start of the pandemic. Despite an ongoing increase in between-school inequality in test scores, it slowed down in both 2021 and 2022.