COVID-19 and educational inequality: How school closures affect low- and high-achieving students
Open accessAbstract
In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We argue that low-achieving students may be particularly affected by the lack of educator support during school closures. We collect detailed time-use information on students before and during the school closures in a survey of 1099 parents in Germany. We find that while students on average reduced their daily learning time of 7.4 h by about half, the reduction was significantly larger for low-achievers (4.1 h) than for high-achievers (3.7 h). Low-achievers disproportionately replaced learning time with detrimental activities such as TV or computer games rather than with activities more conducive to child development. The learning gap was not compensated by parents or schools who provided less support for low-achieving students.
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During school closures, low-achieving students in Germany disproportionately replace learning time with less productive activities, such as playing video games.
“Similarly, Grewenig et al. (2021) and Werner and Woessmann (2021) find that during school closures, low-achieving students in Germany disproportionately replace learning time with less productive activities, such as playing video games.”
From Educational Inequality* (2022) · cites this paper as Grewenig et al. (2021)
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References 29 · Cited by 260
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- Authors
- Grewenig, E., Lergetporer, P., Werner, K., Woessmann, L., & Zierow, L.
- Affiliations
- Centre for European Economic Research (DE)
- Ifo Institute for Economic Research (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Woessmann, Ludger
- Venue
- European Economic Review
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 140
- Pages
- 103920
- ISSN
- 0014-2921 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8474988
- OpenAlex
- W3121525905
- Cited by
- 260
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 67 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 92.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Licence
- Locations
- European Economic Review (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- mediaTUM – the media and publications repository of the Technical University Munich (Technical University Munich) (submittedVersion)
- Reutlingen University Academic Bibliography (Reutlingen University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (CRC TRR 190)
- Society of Labor Economists
- University College London
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Education during COVID-19 pandemic
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, school closures, educational inequality, low-achieving students, high-achieving students, learning time, student time use, parental support, school support, learning gaps, screen time
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