The impact of lockdown on the learning gap: family and school divisions in times of crisis

Abstract

The lockdown of schools in Spain to confront the effects of COVID-19 caused an enormous impact at both societal and educational levels. Schools and families had to react rapidly to a new teaching and learning scenario without the benefit of previous planning or government guidelines. In this context, some schools were better able to adapt to the new circumstances than others. Likewise, the structure and size of families' economic, social and cultural capital produced significant differences in the learning opportunities for children from different backgrounds. This article assesses the impact of the school lockdown on the learning gap between children from different social backgrounds in Catalonia. Based on 35,419 responses to an online survey administered between 26 and 30 March 2020 to families with children aged between 3 and 18, the authors' analysis shows that learning opportunities varied significantly. Middle-class families were able to maintain higher standards of education quality in a critical context, while children from socially disadvantaged families had few learning opportunities both in terms of time and learning experiences (schoolwork and maintenance of after-school activities). Results differed by type of school (public/ private) where students were enrolled, family economic, social and cultural capital, and family living conditions. In the final part of the article, the authors highlight the importance of the role of the school in ensuring learning opportunities for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and they discuss some policy implications of their findings.

The Digital Divide in the Era of COVID-19: An Investigation into an Important Obstacle to the Access to the mHealth by the Citizen

“…Some initiatives have also been based on the development of surveys to thoroughly analyze the causes of the Digital Divide [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”

“…At the time of writing this study, it emerged from a research on pubmed ((COVID-19) AND (Digital Divide) AND (Survey)) that the survey tool proved to be useful for investigating: The impact of bandwidth limitations [ 13 ] The attitude, knowledge and practice towards COVID-19 [ 14 ]. Learning methods [ 15 ]. The racial and ethnic differences in the comparisons of posts shared on COVID-19 [ 16 ].…”

The Covid-19 Pandemics: why Intersectionality Matters

“…Furthermore, data from live surveys in Italy ( Del Boca et al, 2020 ), Spain ( Bonal and González, 2020 ), Germany, Ireland and United Kingdom ( Dietrich et al, 2020 ) show that not all the parents looked after children in the same way: mothers holding a degree and their partner spent more time on children’s education, even controlling for working arrangements. All preliminary evidence shows that schooling disruptions are likely to affect students’ cognitive development and educational attainment with 65% of young reporting lesser learning outcomes since pandemics ( ILO 2020 ), but with differentiated effects depending on classes.…”

Early Childhood and Lockdown: The Challenge of Building a Virtual Mutual Support Network between Children, Families and School for Sustainable Education and Increasing Their Well-Being

“…Among the potentialities of this virtualization, the multiple opportunities offered by virtual platforms to maintain contact between peers [21] stand out, which helps to maintain or increase subjective well-being among students in the face of isolation at home, as well as to allow for further development of school tasks. On the other hand, a number of limitations have been pointed out: at first, an important digital divide between students was revealed, which in most cases was attempted to be solved by providing computer equipment and internet connectivity [22,23], however, it became evident that the availability of technical means did not ensure distance education [17,24], and families, apart from teleworking [25] and managing their children at home, became key players in the implementation of virtualization of education, either by supporting, guiding, or accompanying their children throughout the process [3,18,[25][26][27][28][29]. The fundamental importance of family involvement in their children's education highlights and increases educational inequalities among students [3,16,17,26,[30][31][32], including parents' lack of technical expertise [16,26,30,32], lack of training to understand the activities [17,24,26,27,31], or time spent with their children [18,25,[32][33][34], and in the case of Spain, between 10 and 14% of students did not connect to e-learning [31].…”