A Comparative Study of the Effect of COVID-19 Restrictions on Learning Loss During the Pandemic

Abstract

This research thesis analyses how the educational performance changed as a consequence of COVID-19 restrictions, using PISA test scores from 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2022 and Oxford COVID-19 government restriction tracker for stringency index. Countries included are divided into three groups: low (control), and medium and high (treatment). The Differences-in-Differences method is used to analyse educational performance. Our hypothesis is that the stricter restrictions led to bigger and more visible learning loss. While T-tests show that there are significant differences in average test score between countries with different restriction levels in 2022, there were found similar results in the previous years. Surprisingly, the interaction term for medium and high restriction was insignificant in later DiD analysis, with and without control variables, just two control variables were significant: socioeconomic background and school type. These findings show that COVID-19 affected education globally, but restrictions itself did not affect learning loss, indicating that socioeconomic background and school type and quality had more significant effect. The study concludes that COVID-19 restriction level did not play an important role in educational outcome, but rather further unobserved factors related to the pandemic did.