School closures and their implications for student outcomes: evidence from Lithuania

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper studies the effect of school closures on student outcomes in the Lithuanian context. Using administrative student-level data from 2013–2017 and propensity score matching, we create a balanced sample of control and treatment groups. In contrast to other studies, we focus on students in the final years of high school, possibly eliciting the upper bar of the disruption effect. We also follow students after high school graduation, providing evidence on labour market outcomes. We find that school closure has a small, negative effect on only some exam outcomes and the probability of enrolling at a university, suggesting that the disruption effect is small even for students in the final years of high school.