An Empirical Study of Learning Losses Due to Unscheduled School Closures by COVID-19:

Analysis with “National Assessment of Academic Ability”

Abstract

How did the unscheduled school closures caused by COVID-19 affect children’s academic performance? The loss of skills that would have been acquired by schooling due to unscheduled school closures is called “learning loss.” In this paper, the effect of unscheduled school closures on academic achievement was analyzed using data from Japan’s “National Assessment of Academic Ability” collected in 2021.

　

Previous studies in Japan have pointed out the relationship among school socio-economic status（SES）, length of unscheduled school closure, and academic achievement, in which schools with a lower school SES tend to have lower aca- demic achievement. However, the findings are limited to school-based analyses.

　

The findings obtained by analyzing three-level hierarchical data on students, schools, and prefectures are as follows. First, the effect of temporary school vacations on academic achievement was observed for 6th grade students, but not for 9th grade students. Second, an analysis of the cross-level interaction effect be- tween the duration of unscheduled school closures（school-level factor）and student SES（student-level factor）for 6th grade students and generally observed an interaction effect between high and low SES for children with temporary absences of 60 days or more.

　

The fact that learning loss was more pronounced for students in lower grades and with a lower SES was consistent with previous overseas studies.