COVID‐19 school closures and cumulative disadvantage: Assessing the learning gap in formal, informal and non‐formal education

Abstract

Reducing physical contact has been the most common strategy adopted by governments to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 disease. It has led most countries to close their schools. Previous evidence on the effects of teacher strikes, summer holidays, armed conflicts or any other cause of school closure on learning suggest that the effects of COVID-19 will be highly significant for some and will vary depending on students' previous performance, family characteristics, age or education track, among other factors.Recent evidence shows that learning losses during school closures have been widespread and especially intense among the more disadvantaged students. In this article we evaluate the magnitude of the gap regarding opportunities to learn in formal, informal and non-formal education between families depending on their cultural and economic capital. An online survey (n = 35,937) was carried out during the second week of the confinement (March 2020) in Catalonia. The survey targeted families with children between three and eighteen years. The responses show remarkable social inequalities in opportunities to learn. In this article, we describe the magnitude of the learning gap between social groups and explore which are the most significant factors that explain educational inequalities. Our

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The impact of different family socio-economic classes on the use of Internet learning by adolescence in two regions, Europe and China

“…If full suspension is implemented for a prolonged period of time, A large proportion of adolescence from low socioeconomic backgrounds may be at a persistent disadvantage due to a number of barriers or impediments: prolonged disengagement from education, increased psychosocial challenges (Drane et al, 2021 ;González & Bonal, 2021).…”

Access to online learning: Machine learning analysis from a social justice perspective

“…Nevertheless, the Pandemic has been reported to bring much damage on the whole, setting back the most deprived within (Agostinelli et al, 2022 ; González & Bonal, 2021 ; Nevická & Mesarčík, 2022 ) and between (Laufer et al, 2021 ) countries dramatically, as those in homes that could afford to respond with resource compensation raced ahead with continued access to academic learning, leaving other learners behind (Ferri et al, 2020 ). Moreover, even in HICs, non-learning demands spiked during emergency school closures which impacted upon learners’ capacity to engage with online learning, whilst lower levels of pre-Pandemic digital competencies stood as an obstacle (Hews et al, 2022 ; Mok et al, 2021 ).…”

“…& Bonal, 2021;Nevická & Mesarčík, 2022) and between(Laufer et al, 2021) 2 Note that the cited study precedes the present analysis, as the present work interrogates the first paper's findings by adopting a social justice framework to the theory-led model development for analysis of online learning.…”