Learning Loss in Europe: Reading Scores Declined due to School Closures

Learning Loss in Europe: Reading Scores Declined due to School Closures | (News and Research 350)

Evaluation of Educational Loss in Europe and Central Asia | Patrinos, Jakubowski, Gajderowicz | To what extent has the learning progress of school-aged children slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic? A pre-registered analysis of the first international assessment to be published since the pandemic is conducted to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on student reading. The effect of closures on achievement is modeled by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend in reading achievement using data from all rounds using data from 28 countries in Europe and Central Asia. Reading scores declined by an average of 20 percent of a standard deviation, equivalent to just less than a year of schooling. Losses are significantly larger for students in schools that faced relatively longer closures. While there are no significant differences by sex, it is shown that lower-achieving students experienced much larger losses.

Human Capital Accumulation and Disasters Evidence from the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005  | Andrabi Daniels Das | In 2005 a large earthquake struck northern Pakistan. Exposure to the earthquake was plausibly exogenous to household and individual characteristics, and households received substantial compensation after the earthquake. Four years later, there were no differences in household or adult outcomes by earthquake exposure. Nevertheless, children under age three at the time of the earthquake accumulated large height deficits, and children aged 3–11 scored significantly worse on academic tests, unless their mothers had completed primary education. Even disasters that are accompanied with substantial compensation can lead to severe disruptions in the accumulation of human capital.

Analysis of Teacher Stock versus Flow in Primary Education in East Asia and the Pacific Middle-Income Countries: A Simple Model and Results from Simulation between 2020 and 2030  | Tanaka, Sondergaard | Too many children are not learning to read in the East Asia and Pacific region’s middle-income countries. In some countries in the region, such as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and the Philippines, more than 90 percent of 10-year-olds cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text. To accelerate learning in these countries, better teaching will be needed. To improve teacher quality in the next 10 years, where should countries focus their attention? On improving the teaching skills and content knowledge of their existing stock of teachers, on recruiting and better training new teachers, or on doing both? This paper contributes to this discussion by addressing two policy questions: (i) will East Asia and Pacific’s middle-income countries need more or fewer teachers in the coming decade, and (ii) quantitatively, how important will the newly recruited teachers be (the flow) relative to the teaching workforce who have already been recruited (the stock)? To answer these questions, the paper uses a simple model that projects the required number of primary school teachers in each of the East Asia and Pacific region’s 22 middle-income countries. The model is based on several factors, such as: (i) the size of future cohorts of children, (ii) the proportion of those cohorts who end up in school, (iii) the pupil-to-teacher ratio, and (iv) teacher attrition. Two key messages emerge with an important policy implication. First, significant heterogeneity exists across the 22 countries, with seven countries projected to need fewer teachers overall in the next 10 years relative to the teacher stock in 2020, while the rest will need to expand their teacher workforce. Second, despite this heterogeneity, in every East Asia and Pacific country, teachers who are already “in the system” are expected to constitute most teachers still employed in 2030. In some countries, teachers who have already been recruited will constitute more than 70 percent of those who will be in schools in 2030. The findings have an important policy implication, namely: if countries want to improve the quality of teaching in schools, their primary focus in the next 10 years should be on improving the stock, that is, the quality of their current teacher workforce (through more and better teacher professional development).

To help schoolchildren in poor countries, reduce lead poisoning | Doing so could close the gap with rich places by a fifth | Schoolchildren in poor countries perform worse on standardized tests than those in rich ones. They also have ten times more lead in their blood. In a new working paper researchers at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), an American think-tank, argue that lead poisoning alone accounts for a fifth of the learning gap between rich and poor countries. In the poorest places, more than 90% of ten-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple text, compared with just 8% of children of the same age in rich countries. Kids in poor countries are held back for many reasons, including overcrowded classrooms, outdated teaching, bad nutrition, and the pressure to earn money. But the cognitive burden of lead poisoning makes learning even harder—and may be the simplest challenge to tackle. Leaded petrol, which has been banned by every government in the world, is no longer a problem. But lead still lurks elsewhere in poor countries. It is in car batteries, which are pried open in backyard recycling workshops; in the paint on walls and the glaze on cooking pots; in self-made eyeliner and adulterated spices. It contaminates water and lingers in the soil. Infants absorb about four to five times as much of the lead they ingest as adults do. Half of all children in south Asia and nearly 40% of those in Africa have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The researchers from the CGD have pulled together the findings of 47 studies, including 18 from developing countries. They paint a clear picture of the damage from lead exposure, which alters the release of neurotransmitters in the brain and is associated with shorter attention spans, lower intelligence, and anti-social behavior. To convey the scale of the problem, the researchers consider a set of Harmonized Learning Outcomes (HLO) from the World Bank, which are derived from test scores…

More than Sheepskin: A Natural Experiment on College and Earnings | Justicz, Phipps, Price | Evidence shows college increases earnings, but little causal evidence distinguishes whether these earnings come through human capital gains or from the signal a college degree sends. We use the unique situation created by the First World War, where several cohorts of West Point cadets were unexpectedly graduated early. These early graduates never saw combat in the war but were awarded a college degree—typically a four-year degree—after completing only two or three years of school. Using 1940 census data, we find an additional year of college leads to a 10-15\% increase in earnings 20 years post-graduation.

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Returns to Education Turns 50 |

Submit a Manuscript to the Journal Education Economics for a Special Issue on the 50th Anniversary of the Returns to Education: An International Comparison | Manuscript deadline: 31 October 2023 | Special Issue Editor: Harry Patrinos, World Bank | Submit An Article | This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book, Returns to Education: An International Comparison, by George Psacharopoulos (assisted by Keith Hinchliffe). Education Economics is publishing a special issue to mark this occasion and the contributions of Professor Psacharopoulos. The focus of this special issue is research on the returns to education. Research on international comparisons and /or returns to education in less developed economies are especially welcome.