Russian Schools during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact of the First Two Waves on the Quality of Education

Abstract

International studies about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of general education have yielded contradictory results: educational outcomes have fallen markedly in some countries while remaining more or less constant in others. At the same time, over half of published studies attest to the growth of educational inequality during the pandemic. The present article assesses the impact of the pandemic using the data of a regional monitoring study of all schoolchildren in grades 4, 6 and 8 in the Krasnoyarsk Region in 2019 and 2021. Tests of reading literacy in grades 4 and 6 as well as of science literacy in grade 8 have shown the satisfactory psychometric quality. Multilevel regression analysis was used to show that the level of functional literacy of the “pandemic” cohort of schoolchildren, controlled for contextual characteristics, was significantly lower for students in all grades except grade 4. The biggest loss was found for scientific literacy. No correlation was found between the pandemic effect size and the socioeconomic composition of the class (the gap between children with different SES remains at the same level as it was before the pandemic). The teachers’ opportunity to conduct online classes did not serve to improve the educational outcomes of schoolchildren during the pandemic.