COVID-19 and inequalities in educational achievement in Italy

A Lost Generation? Impact of COVID-19 on High School Students' Achievements

“…Our results show no significant differences related to parents' education, while most of the international evidence emphasises the exacerbation of inequalities based on parents' socio-economic background. These results are in line with other results for Italy in the lower grades (Bazoli et al, 2022;Borgonovi & Ferrara, 2023). In the results' section we speculate on possible explanations, pointing to the specificity of the Italian case, where many low-skilled workers were forced to stay home (not working), while high-skilled workers who worked remotely had to learn how to use ICT tools they had no familiarity with (as already mentioned, before the pandemic Italy had very low digital skills among the adult population).…”

“…Most of the observed effects are small and statistically insignificant. This result is in line with existing studies on lower grades in Italy (Bazoli et al, 2022;Borgonovi & Ferrara, 2023), which highlights an Italian specificity rather than a grade specificity and calls for further reflection. Why is it that, in Italy, contrary to theoretical predictions and international findings, there is no evidence that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have suffered the greatest learning losses?…”

“…The negative effects vary widely across regions, even after controlling for regional differences in the duration of school closures, suggesting that other contextual factors matter. Altogether, these estimates are much larger than those obtained for lower grades in Italy (Bazoli et al, 2022;Borgonovi & Ferrara, 2023;Contini et al, 2022), suggesting that the disruption was much greater in high school than in earlier grades. While the losses experienced by younger children are of great concern because of the cumulative nature of learning, the learning losses experienced by students at the end of their school careers can also be critical.…”

“…and -0.29 in maths and +0.06 s.d. and -0.08 in reading, depending on the period covered, the grade and the estimation strategy (Bazoli et al, 2022;Borgonovi & Ferrara, 2023;Contini et al, 2022). The fact that the learning loss is much larger in Grade 13 is probably due to the longer duration of school closure that high school students have been exposed to.…”

“…Contini et al (2022) estimated the effects of the first wave of the pandemic (February-June 2020) on the mathematics achievement of primary school children in the city of Turin and found a loss in maths achievements. Borgonovi & Ferrara (2023) examined the impact of COVID-19 on students' achievement in mathematics and reading in primary and lower secondary schools. They found a small positive effect of the pandemic on primary school children's achievements and a negative effect for lower secondary school students.…”