IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fbk/wpaper/2022-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Learning Loss and Students’ Social Origins During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Bazoli
  • Sonia Marzadro
  • Antonio Schizzerotto
  • Loris Vergolini

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is intended to establish the intensity of learning loss in reading and mathematics experienced in Italy by fifth, eighth and thirteenth graders because of school closures owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, it aims to demonstrate whether school closures have or have not affected the educational inequalities associated with the social position of the students’ families, their geographic area of residence, their migrant status and their high school track. To estimate these two possible effects, we exploit INVALSI data collected in school years 2018/2019 and 2020/2021 and rely on a counterfactual approach based on coarsened exact matching, where students belonging to the 2020/21 cohort represent the treated group and those of the 2018/19 cohort make up the control group. Our results indicate that the learning loss is definitely severe among students attending grade thirteen and eight, while it is less pronounced and involves only mathematics among fifth graders. Moreover, according to our hypotheses, the intensity of the learning loss turns out to be substantially the same across social strata of students’ origins and their remaining ascriptive traits.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Bazoli & Sonia Marzadro & Antonio Schizzerotto & Loris Vergolini, 2022. "Learning Loss and Students’ Social Origins During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2022-03, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
  • Handle: RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2022-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://irvapp.fbk.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WP_IRVAPP_2022-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clark, Andrew E. & Nong, Huifu & Zhu, Hongjia & Zhu, Rong, 2021. "Compensating for academic loss: Online learning and student performance during the COVID-19 pandemic," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    2. Per Engzell & Arun Frey & Mark D. Verhagen, 2021. "Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(17), pages 2022376118-, April.
    3. Matthew Blackwell & Stefano Iacus & Gary King & Giuseppe Porro, 2009. "cem: Coarsened exact matching in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(4), pages 524-546, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dalit Contini & Maria Laura Di Tommaso & Caterina Muratori & Daniela Piazzalunga & Lucia Schiavon, 2023. "A lost generation? Impact of COVID-19 on high school students' achievements," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 691 JEL Classification: I, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Caria, Andrea & Di Liberto, Adriana & Pau, Sara, 2024. "Remote Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Three-Level Survey of Italian Schools," IZA Discussion Papers 17545, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bastian A. Betthäuser & Anders M. Bach-Mortensen & Per Engzell, 2023. "A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 375-385, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sun, Yue & Tang, Can & Zhao, Zhong, 2024. "Does online education magnify educational inequalities? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    2. Rita Takács & Szabolcs Takács & Judit T. Kárász & Attila Oláh & Zoltán Horváth, 2023. "The impact of the first wave of COVID-19 on students’ attainment, analysed by IRT modelling method," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Guido Neidhöfer & Nora Lustig & Mariano Tommasi, 2021. "Intergenerational transmission of lockdown consequences: prognosis of the longer-run persistence of COVID-19 in Latin America," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(3), pages 571-598, September.
    4. Kóczán, Zs., 2024. "Lasting scars: The long-term effects of school closures on earnings," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    5. Heidmann, Laure & Neirac, Lucie & Andreu, Sandra & Conceiçao, Pierre & Eteve, Yann & Fabre, Marianne & Vourc'h, Ronan, 2023. "Delayed learning to read and write during the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal study of the heterogeneous effects on all first graders in France," SocArXiv qn9a8, Center for Open Science.
    6. Gillitzer, Christian & Prasad, Nalini, 2024. "The effect of school closures on standardized test scores: Evidence under zero-COVID policies," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    7. Maria De Paola & Francesca Gioia & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2022. "Online Teaching, Procrastination And Students’ Achievement: Evidence From Covid-19 Induced Remote Learning," Working Papers 202202, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    8. Yang, Liu & Zhang, Lei, 2024. "Online teaching, gender differences and education outcomes: Evidence from Chinese urban high schools during the COVID-19," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 534-553.
    9. Shuheng Yu & Liu Hong & Gaoming Ma, 2023. "The Mediation of Exam-oriented Cultural Capital: Economic Capital and Educational Inequality of Chinese High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic and School Closures," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 1189-1204, June.
    10. Abadía Alvarado, Luz Karime & Gómez Soler, Silvia C. & Cifuentes González, Juanita, 2023. "Gone with the pandemic: How did Covid-19 affect the academic performance of Colombian students?," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    11. Liao, Haoye & Ma, Sen & Xue, Hao, 2022. "Does school shutdown increase inequality in academic performance? Evidence from COVID-19 pandemic in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    12. Lucas A. Mariani & Jose Renato Haas Ornelas & Bernardo Ricca, 2023. "Banks’ Physical Footprint and Financial Technology Adoption," Working Papers Series 576, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    13. Alessio Buonomo & Cinzia Conti & Francesca Di Patrizio & Salvatore Strozza & Marco Dionisio Terribili, 2024. "Distance learning during the pandemic: opinions and attitudes of young students," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 78(2), pages 211-220, April-Jun.
    14. Binelli, Chiara & Comi, Simona & Meschi, Elena & Pagani, Laura, 2024. "Every cloud has a silver lining: The role of study time and class recordings on university students’ performance during COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 305-328.
    15. Fabio Fontana & Kelsey Bourbeau & Terence Moriarty & Michael Pereira da Silva, 2022. "The Relationship between Physical Activity, Sleep Quality, and Stress: A Study of Teachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-9, November.
    16. Sergio Afcha & Jose García-Quevedo, 2016. "The impact of R&D subsidies on R&D employment composition," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(6), pages 955-975.
    17. Merino, José & Borja, Victor Hugo & Lopez, Oliva & Ochoa, José Alfredo & Clark, Eduardo & Petersen, Lila & Caballero, Saul, 2021. "Ivermectin and the odds of hospitalization due to COVID-19: evidence from a quasi-experimental analysis based on a public intervention in Mexico City," SocArXiv r93g4, Center for Open Science.
    18. Jing Wang & Gen Li & Kai-Lung Hui, 2022. "Monetary Incentives and Knowledge Spillover: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3549-3572, May.
    19. Wheeler, P. Barrett, 2019. "Loan loss accounting and procyclical bank lending: The role of direct regulatory actions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 463-495.
    20. Leduc, Elisabeth & Tojerow, Ilan, 2020. "Subsidizing Domestic Services as a Tool to Fight Unemployment: Effectiveness and Hidden Costs," IZA Discussion Papers 13544, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Learning loss; Social inequalities; Covid-19; Italy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2022-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alessio Tomelleri or Daniela Anesi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irvapit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.