Inequality in homeschooling during the Corona crisis in the Netherlands. First results from the LISS Panel

The outbreak of the Corona virus has led to unprecedented measures in education. From March 16, all schools in the Netherlands are closed, and children must keep up with their schoolwork from home. Parents are expected to take a crucial role in this “homeschooling”: they are primarily responsible for ensuring that their children follow the curriculum. In this article I report the first results of a module in the LISS Panel that was designed to map how parents school their children in primary and secondary education. Data on a nationally representative sample of 1,318 children in primary and secondary education were gathered in April. The results show marked differences between social groups. Whereas all parents find it important that their children keep up with the schoolwork, children from advantaged backgrounds receive much more parental support and have more resources (e.g., own computer) to study from home. Differences in parental support are driven by the ability to help: parents with a higher education degree feels themselves much capable to help their children with schoolwork than lower educated parents. Parents also report that schools provide more extensive distant schooling for children in the academic track in secondary education (vwo) than for children in the pre-vocational track (vmbo). Finally, there is a clear gender gap: parents feel much more capable to support their daughters than their sons. These initial findings provide clear indications that the school shutdown in the Netherlands is likely to have strong effects on the inequality in educational opportunities.