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Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools

By the end of 2021, more than 168 million students across the globe had missed a year of face-to-face schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In NSW, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for eight weeks during 2020 and a further 14 weeks during 2021. This study provides robust empi...

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Autores principales: Miller, Andrew, Fray, Leanne, Gore, Jennifer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9976675/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37359303
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00614-y
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author Miller, Andrew
Fray, Leanne
Gore, Jennifer
author_facet Miller, Andrew
Fray, Leanne
Gore, Jennifer
author_sort Miller, Andrew
collection PubMed
description By the end of 2021, more than 168 million students across the globe had missed a year of face-to-face schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In NSW, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for eight weeks during 2020 and a further 14 weeks during 2021. This study provides robust empirical evidence on how two years of disruptions to schooling affected student learning. Drawing on matched data for 3,827 Year 3 and 4 students from 101 NSW government schools, this paper compares student achievement growth in mathematics and reading for 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021 (second year of the pandemic) student cohorts. While overall there was no significant difference between cohorts, when analysed by socio-educational advantage, we were surprised to find that students in the lowest band achieved approximately three months’ additional growth in mathematics. Arguably, grave concerns about the potentially dire impact of COVID-19 on the learning of disadvantaged students were met by investments that made a difference. We argue that targeted funding and system-wide initiatives to support more equitable outcomes should remain a priority after the pandemic if Australia is to meet its aspirations for excellence and equity.
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spelling pubmed-99766752023-03-02 Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools Miller, Andrew Fray, Leanne Gore, Jennifer Aust Educ Res Article By the end of 2021, more than 168 million students across the globe had missed a year of face-to-face schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In NSW, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for eight weeks during 2020 and a further 14 weeks during 2021. This study provides robust empirical evidence on how two years of disruptions to schooling affected student learning. Drawing on matched data for 3,827 Year 3 and 4 students from 101 NSW government schools, this paper compares student achievement growth in mathematics and reading for 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021 (second year of the pandemic) student cohorts. While overall there was no significant difference between cohorts, when analysed by socio-educational advantage, we were surprised to find that students in the lowest band achieved approximately three months’ additional growth in mathematics. Arguably, grave concerns about the potentially dire impact of COVID-19 on the learning of disadvantaged students were met by investments that made a difference. We argue that targeted funding and system-wide initiatives to support more equitable outcomes should remain a priority after the pandemic if Australia is to meet its aspirations for excellence and equity. Springer Netherlands 2023-03-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9976675/ /pubmed/37359303 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00614-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Miller, Andrew
Fray, Leanne
Gore, Jennifer
Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title_full Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title_fullStr Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title_full_unstemmed Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title_short Was COVID-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? A comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in Australian primary schools
title_sort was covid-19 an unexpected catalyst for more equitable learning outcomes? a comparative analysis after two years of disrupted schooling in australian primary schools
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9976675/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37359303
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00614-y
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