Publications
An important goal of the ifo Institute is to make its scientific findings, analyses, survey results, and statements accessible to as many people as possible. We therefore offer a wide range of publications for different target groups with the aim of stimulating economic policy debate. Here, our own authors as well as members of the ifo’s wider networks and other experts have the opportunity to publish relevant findings and debate them publicly.
COVID-19 school closures hit low-achieving students particularly hard
A key feature of school closures is that there is no trained educator in the room to help. In their column Elisabeth Grewenig, Philipp Lergetporer, Katharina Werner, Ludger Woessmann, and Larissa Zierow argue that low-achieving students are particularly affected by the lack of teacher support. Based on a German time-use survey, it finds that students on average reduced daily learning time by about half during the school closures. This reduction was significantly larger for low-achieving students, who disproportionately replaced learning time with activities deemed detrimental to child development such as computer gaming rather than with more conducive activities such as reading.