The impact of lockdown on education

Just how damaging has lockdown been to children’s education? An Oxford University study has tried to quantify it by analysing data from Dutch schoolchildren — who, unlike in Britain where exams were cancelled, took tests shortly before and shortly after the first lockdown last spring.

If any country’s children had managed to get through lockdown with their education unscathed, suggest the authors, it ought to be those in the Netherlands. There, schools were closed for a relatively short period — eight weeks — and the penetration of broadband in homes is higher than in any other country. Yet that did not stop children regressing by an average of 3 percentage points in their test scores between February and June.

More worryingly still, the level of parental education was a big predictor of falling performance — the less academically qualified the parents, the more the children regressed: with scores falling by 60 per cent more in groups with the least-educated parents.