Inequality in the Effects of Primary School Closures due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the Netherlands
Open accessAbstract
Using a large dataset of around 500,000 students from about 1,900 schools, this paper shows the effect of two school closures and 1.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic on standardized learning growth for mathematics, reading, and spelling in Dutch primary education. We find that the school closures have a negative effect on standardized learning growth, amounting to an annual average of 5.5 weeks of learning loss. When analyzing differential effects by socioeconomic status, parental education, household income, household structure, household size, and migration status, we find that the negative effect is larger for the more vulnerable students.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Distance learning during school closures does not seem to have helped much; only the duration of school closures led to variations.
“Distance learning during the school closures does not seem to have helped much21,22; only the duration of school closures led to variations.”
From COVID-19, school closures, and student learning outcomes. New global evidence from PISA (2025) · cites this paper as [21]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2022376118 · Cited by 1,848 · see citing works
Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2020) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/ve4z7 · Cited by 1,739 · see citing works
Learning loss during Covid-19: An early systematic review
Donnelly, R., & Patrinos, H. A. (2022) · PROSPECTS · doi:10.1007/s11125-021-09582-6 · Cited by 445 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Bloom, Howard S., Carolyn J. Hill, Alison Rebeck Black, and Mark W. Lipsey. 2008. "Perfor- mance Trajectories and Performance Gaps as Achievement Effect-Size Benchmarks for Edu- cational Interventions." Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 1 (4): 289-328.
- Haelermans, Carla, Timo Huijgen, Madelon Jacobs, Mark Levels, Rolf van der Velden, Lynn van Vugt, and Sanne van Wetten. 2020. "Using Data to Advance Educational Research, Policy, and Practice: Design, Content, and Research Potential of the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education." European Sociological Review 36 (4): 643-62.
- Haelermans, Carla, Madelon Jacobs, Lynn van Vugt, Bas Aarts, Henry Abbink. 2021. "A Full Year COVID-19 Crisis with Interrupted Learning and Two School Closures: The Effects on Learning Growth and Inequality in Primary Education." SocArXiv. https://doi. org/10.31219/osf.io/78fje. · DOI
- Haelermans, Carla, Roxanne Korthals, Madelon Jacobs, Suzanne de Leeuw, Stan Vermeulen, Lynn van Vugt, et al. 2022. "Sharp Increase in Inequality in Education in Times of COVID- 19 Pandemic." PLOS ONE 17 (2): e0261114.
- Maldonado, Joana Elisa, and Kristof De Witte. 2021. "The Effect of School Closures on Standardized Student Test Outcomes." Brit- ish Educational Research Journal. https://doi. org/10.1002/berj.3754. · DOI · Paper page
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Global learning loss in student achievement: First estimates using comparable reading scores
Jakubowski, M., Gajderowicz, T., & Patrinos, H. A. (2023) · Economics Letters · doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111313 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
COVID-19, school closures, and student learning outcomes. New global evidence from PISA
Jakubowski, M., Gajderowicz, T., & Patrinos, H. A. (2025) · npj Science of Learning · doi:10.1038/s41539-025-00297-3 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
The Longer Students Were Out of School, the Less They Learned
Patrinos, H. A. (2023) · Journal of School Choice · doi:10.1080/15582159.2023.2210941 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
- Authors
- Haelermans, C., Jacobs, M., van der Velden, R., van Vugt, L., & van Wetten, S.
- Affiliations
- Maastricht University (NL)
- Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University (email: )
- Venue
- AEA Papers and Proceedings
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2022-05-01
- Volume
- 112
- Pages
- 303-307
- ISSN
- 2574-0768 (ISSN-L)
- 2574-0776
- OpenAlex
- W4281788864
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5
- FWCI
- 7.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- AEA Papers and Proceedings (publishedVersion)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- 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
- school closures, COVID-19 pandemic, learning loss, educational inequality, primary education, mathematics, reading, spelling, socioeconomic status, parental education, household income, household composition, migration status, vulnerable students, Netherlands
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
