Nandi Arindam, Haberland Nicole, Kozak Meredith, Ngô Thoại D
The Population Council, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY, 10017, USA.
One Health Trust, Washington, DC, USA.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2023 Sep 22;8(1):42. doi: 10.1038/s41539-023-00193-8.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education delivery around the world, with school closures affecting over 1.6 billion students worldwide. In India, schools were closed for over 18 months, affecting 248 million students. This study estimates the effect of the pandemic on adolescent literacy and schooling outcomes in India. We used data from the National Family Health Survey. (NFHS-5) which covered 636,699 households across all districts of India from June 2019 to April 2021. We considered 15-17 year old adolescents who were surveyed after March 2020 as the post-COVID group while those surveyed earlier were included in the pre-COVID group. We used propensity score matching and inverse propensity score weighted regression methods to account for differences in socioeconomic characteristics between the two groups. Rates of literacy (ability to read a complete sentence) were 1.5-1.6% lower among post-COVID girls as compared with similar pre-COVID girls. Among post-COVID girls in the lowest wealth quintile, rates of literacy were 3.1-3.8% lower than similar pre-COVID girls. There was no loss in literacy among post-COVID girls in the highest wealth quintile. COVID-induced loss in literacy among girls was twice in rural areas as compared to urban areas, and substantially higher among socioeconomically disadvantaged caste groups as compared with privileged caste groups. Post-COVID girls also had 0.08-0.1 lower years of schooling completed than similar pre-COVID girls but there was no difference in out-of-school rates. In a smaller subsample of 15-17 year old boys, the post-COVID group had 2% lower out-of-school rates and there was no difference in literacy or years of schooling completed as compared with matched pre-COVID boys. While markers of vulnerability such as residence, caste, and poverty further amplified the risk of learning. loss for girls, they did not have the same effect on boys.
新冠疫情扰乱了全球的教育交付，学校关闭影响了全球超过16亿学生。在印度，学校关闭了18个月以上，影响了2.48亿学生。本研究估计了疫情对印度青少年识字率和学业成果的影响。我们使用了全国家庭健康调查（NFHS-5）的数据，该调查覆盖了2019年6月至2021年4月印度所有地区的636,699户家庭。我们将2020年3月后接受调查的15至17岁青少年视为新冠后群体，而在此之前接受调查的青少年则被纳入新冠前群体。我们使用倾向得分匹配和逆倾向得分加权回归方法来考虑两组之间社会经济特征的差异。与新冠前类似的女孩相比，新冠后女孩的识字率（能够读完一个完整句子的能力）低1.5%-1.6%。在最贫困财富五分位数的新冠后女孩中，识字率比新冠前类似的女孩低3.1%-3.8%。在最富裕财富五分位数的新冠后女孩中，识字率没有下降。与城市地区相比，农村地区女孩因新冠导致的识字率损失是城市地区的两倍，与特权种姓群体相比，社会经济弱势种姓群体中的识字率损失要高得多。新冠后女孩完成的受教育年限也比新冠前类似的女孩少0.08-0.1年，但失学率没有差异。在一个更小的15至17岁男孩子样本中，新冠后群体的失学率低2%，与匹配的新冠前男孩相比，识字率或完成的受教育年限没有差异。虽然居住、种姓和贫困等脆弱性指标进一步放大了女孩学习损失的风险，但对男孩没有同样的影响。
