School Closures and Student Achievement: Evidence from a High Stakes Exam

Marc Riudavets-Barcons () and Roope Uusitalo
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Marc Riudavets-Barcons: University of Helsinki

No 16074, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the effect of school closures and the transition from on-site to on-line teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Finnish upper secondary schools. To identify the effects we exploit variation in the length of school closure periods across schools between autumn 2020 and spring 2021. Using a difference-in-difference design, we show that the students who studied on-line for longer periods performed equally well in the Matriculation exam at the end of upper-secondary education than the students who experienced shorter school closures. Moreover, we show that inequalities across Finnish students from different socioeconomic backgrounds did not exacerbate during this period.

Keywords: test scores; online teaching; school closures; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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