Nedstängda samhällen - försämrad skolgång?

Abstract

This paper is researching the economic impact of Covid-19 restrictions on the performance of students in primary school in what are broadly categorized as low- and middle-income countries by the World Bank. This is done in the context of many studies being done on the academic impact of the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions, but only on specific smaller regions and nations or with the focus on more developed nations. This broad study on a large portion of what’s categorized as low- and middle-income countries is done with 4 iterations of an OLS regression. This is then controlled with a Mann-Whitney U test to determine if there is any discernible correlation between a high level of lockdown stringency and a low level of primary school completion rate. Though the results of this paper are statistically insignificant, most likely due to the low amount of data points, they are also potentially economically insignificant. The resulting correlation given is so small that it might as well be disregarded as economically insignificant if it were statistically significant. The paper concludes that there is a great need for a bigger data coverage on this very important topic, to discern the long-term ramifications of this potential impact on education. We should also gather more data for insight into how to proceed with likewise policy in the future since the risk of a new and even worse pandemic is always potentially on the event horizon.