The gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent literacy and schooling outcomes in India

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education delivery around the world, with school closures affecting over 1.6 billion students worldwide. In India, schools were closed for over 18 months, affecting 248 million students. This study estimates the effect of the pandemic on adolescent literacy and schooling outcomes in India. We used data from the National Family Health Survey. (NFHS-5) which covered 636,699 households across all districts of India from June 2019 to April 2021. We considered 15–17 year old adolescents who were surveyed after March 2020 as the post-COVID group while those surveyed earlier were included in the pre-COVID group. We used propensity score matching and inverse propensity score weighted regression methods to account for differences in socioeconomic characteristics between the two groups. Rates of literacy (ability to read a complete sentence) were 1.5–1.6% lower among post-COVID girls as compared with similar pre-COVID girls. Among post-COVID girls in the lowest wealth quintile, rates of literacy were 3.1–3.8% lower than similar pre-COVID girls. There was no loss in literacy among post-COVID girls in the highest wealth quintile. COVID-induced loss in literacy among girls was twice in rural areas as compared to urban areas, and substantially higher among socioeconomically disadvantaged caste groups as compared with privileged caste groups. Post-COVID girls also had 0.08–0.1 lower years of schooling completed than similar pre-COVID girls but there was no difference in out-of-school rates. In a smaller subsample of 15–17 year old boys, the post-COVID group had 2% lower out-of-school rates and there was no difference in literacy or years of schooling completed as compared with matched pre-COVID boys. While markers of vulnerability such as residence, caste, and poverty further amplified the risk of learning. loss for girls, they did not have the same effect on boys.

Relationship between adolescent anemia and school attendance observed during a nationally representative survey in India

“…The proportion of male adolescents with any anemia was over 30%, further justifying the need to consider both young men and women in future efforts to reduce the burden of anemia among school-going age adolescents 21 . Despite the increasing burden of anemia among adolescents 33 and COVID-19 pandemic 4 , the proportion of adolescents who attended school in our sample increased from 55.4% to 70.3% during the same period (Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ).…”

“…In India, for instance, over 40 million youth of upper secondary age were not in school as of 2020, the largest population of adolescents out-of-school in any country worldwide 1 . Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to large losses of income and the temporary closing of schools in many LMICs 3 , including India 4 , making the realization of global targets for universal primary and secondary education unlikely without removing barriers to secondary school enrollment.…”