Learning inequalities during the Covid-19 pandemic: how families cope with home-schooling

Abstract

Website: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/publicpolicy/covid19/learning-inequalities-covid-19.page The transition from face-to-face to distance (home and online) schooling is likely to generate educational loss. Using data from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we estimate that loss to be more pronounced for children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds than for other children. In April 2020, one month into the COVID-19 lockdown: - Children in primary schools spent on average 2.4 hours per day doing schoolwork (compromising on average 2.2 offline lessons - a mix of worksheets, assignments and watching videos – and 0.6 online lessons) plus 2 hours per day of support from adults. - Children in secondary schools spent on average 3 hours per day doing schoolwork (compromising on average 2.3 offline lessons and 1 online lesson) plus 0.9 hours per day of support from adults. - Focusing on combinations of circumstances which are both common and policy relevant (see graphs), we found that children in the most advantaged families, where both parents work regularly from home, the main parent[1] is in a ‘service class’ occupation (large employers, managers of professionals) and the children have their own computer spent on average 2.9 hours per day on school work for primary and 3.8 per day for secondary pupils. More disadvantaged children in families where the main parent is not in a service class occupation, where the child has to share a computer with other family members and either parent does not work regularly from home, the hours spent per day on school work are 2.3 for primary and 2.6 for secondary education. Socio-economic differences in the estimated education loss are marked. - For children in primary education, those from the most advantaged families will have lost on average 24% of a standard deviation across subjects by the time schools reopen in autumn, while children from the most disadvantaged families will have lost 31% of a standard deviation. - For children in secondary education, children from the most advantaged group will have lost on average 14% of a standard deviation across subjects, while children from the most disadvantaged group will have lost twice as much, 28% of a standard deviation.