The Impacts of Remote Learning in Secondary Education: Evidence from Brazil during the Pandemic

Abstract

Background: The transition to remote learning in the context of Covid-19 could lead to dramatic setbacks for school enrollment and learning outcomes, especially in developing countries – where a multiplicity of challenges, from limited connectivity to little support from parents, are bound to limit its effectiveness. To date, however, no study has rigorously documented the educational impacts of remote learning relative to in-person classes within primary and secondary education. Quantifying the extent of those losses, as well as the extent to which resuming in-person classes in the pandemic could at least partially offset them, is urgent, as governments worldwide struggle evaluating the trade-offs between the health and educational risks of reopening schools, with vaccination rates still dragging.Methods: Taking advantage of the fact that São Paulo featured in-person classes for the lion’s share of the first school quarter of 2020, but not thereafter, we estimate the effects of remote learning on secondary education, using a differences-in-differences strategy that contrasts variation in dropout risk and standardized test scores between the first and the last school quarters in 2020 to that in 2019, when all classes were in-person. We estimate heterogeneous effects by grade, student characteristics and school characteristics. We also estimate intention-to-treat (ITT) effects of reopening schools in the pandemic through a differences-in-differences strategy, contrasting differences between middle- and high-school students within municipalities that authorized in-person classes to partially return for the latter over the last quarter of 2020, to those within municipalities that did not.Findings: Dropout risk increased by 365% under remote learning. While risk increased with local disease activity, most of it can be attributed directly to the absence of in-person classes:we estimate that dropout risk increased by no less than 247% across the State, even at the low end of the distribution of per capita Covid-19 cases. Average standardized test scores decreased by 0.32 standard deviation, as if students had only learned 27.5% of the in-person equivalent under remote learning. Learning losses did not systematically increase with local disease activity, attesting that they are in fact the outcome of remote learning, rather than a consequence of other health or economic impacts of Covid-19. Authorizing schools to partially reopen for in-person classes increased high-school students’ test scores by 20% relative to the control group.Interpretation: Results show that the societal costs of keeping schools closed in the pandemic are very large. While the learning losses that we document are at least as large as those documented in developed countries on the aftermath of the first Covid-19 wave, the dramatic surge in dropout risk is unique to developing countries. Such massive impacts are likely to bring about long-lasting effects on employment, productivity, and poverty levels. Our findings highlight that reopening schools under safe protocols can prevent those costs from growing even larger. They also caution against recent enthusiasm for remote learning in primary and secondary education outside the context of Covid-19.Funding: Research funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) as part of a partnership between IADB and the São Paulo State Education Secretariat.

Nowcasting the Impact of Covid-19 on Education, Intergenerational Mobility and Earnings Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…This means that in these countries less than one of every ten children with low-educated parents affected by the COVID-19 crisis may leave education with a secondary schooling degree. This alarming picture mirrors the projections of Neidhöfer et al (2021) for Latin America, which found some confirmation in current analyses of education drop-outs using administrative data for Brazil (Lichand et al, 2021).…”

Credibility and Involvement of Social Media in Education—Recommendations for Mitigating the Negative Effects of the Pandemic among High School Students

“…Based on our research findings, some practical implications and suggestions given for future research might inspire consideration of the use of social media as a tool that might help improve education and current forms of online education, as well as lead students to experience a potential decrease in the negative effects of the pandemic [ 68 , 69 , 70 ]. This kind of research seems to be very significant because, as experts have pointed out, learning losses did not systematically increase, for example, with individual disease or as a consequence of other health or economic impacts of COVID-19—but were, in fact, the outcome of remote learning [ 5 , 6 , 23 , 109 , 110 ]. Therefore, it is important to ask, how meaningful has the role of social media within online education been so far [ 46 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ], or how will the current pandemic affect the practice of social media education in the future?…”

“…Isolation, loneliness, a delayed return to work or school, and restrictions on social interactions are contributing to the increase in new cases of depression, suicidal ideation, attempts at self-harm, fears, anxieties, mood disturbances (elevated or irritable mood), academic procrastination, and insomnia. These and many others negative effects of the current pandemic are bringing into the issue of current public health more new patients, as well as a worsening of existing patients’ conditions [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. The OECD states that up to one in six citizens of countries belonging to the European Union suffer from a mental health problem.…”

Measuring Child Labor: Whom Should Be Asked, and Why It Matters

“…On the other hand, child labor might detract from children's future adult productivity, by competing with effort at school, or even leading children to drop out to help supporting their families' livelihoods (Shah and Steinberg, 2017). The pandemic made this discussion more alive than ever, with dropout risk skyrocketing among middle-and high-school students in developing countries (Lichand et al, 2021), among other reasons due to the economic crunch and subsequent surge in demand for child labor (World Bank, 2017).…”