Study: closing primary schools harms educational equality
Schools closures during the Covid-19 lockdown slowed down younger pupils’ progress and increased the differences between them, a Swiss study has found. Older pupils were less affected. Further closures of primary schools would therefore not be justifiable if you want to maintain educational equality, the research concluded. The team around Martin Tomasik at the University of Zurich used a computer-based feedback system - in which teachers gave pupils tasks - to assess how youngsters in the German-speaking part of Switzerland were doing before and during school closures in March and April. This allowed them to follow the progress of 28,000 primary and secondary school pupils in German and maths. Progress halved They found that while home schooling did not affect the learning progress of secondary students (aged 12 plus), primary children’s progress dropped by half, according to results published in the Swiss media on Thursday and Friday. In addition, some pupils...