The school closures owing to the 2020 COVID-19 crisis resulted in a significant disruption of education provision, leading to fears of learning losses and of an increase in educational inequality. This article evaluates the effects of school closures based on standardised tests in the last year of primary school in the Dutch-speaking Flemish region of Belgium. Using a 6-year panel, we find that students of the 2020 cohort experienced significant learning losses in three out of five tested subjects, with a decrease in school averages of mathematics scores of 0.17 standard deviations and Dutch scores (reading, writing, language) of 0.19 standard deviations as compared to previous cohorts. This finding holds when accounting for school characteristics, standardised tests in Grade 4 and school fixed effects. Given the large observed effect sizes, the effect of school closures appears to be a combination of lost learning progress and learning loss. Moreover, we observe that inequality both within schools and across schools rises by 7% for mathematics and 8% for Dutch. The learning losses are correlated with observed school characteristics, as schools with a more disadvantaged student population experience larger learning losses.

中文翻译：

---

学校停课对标准化学生考试成绩的影响

由于 2020 年 COVID-19 危机，学校停课导致教育供应严重中断，导致人们担心学习损失和教育不平等加剧。本文根据比利时荷兰语佛兰芒地区小学最后一年的标准化考试评估学校停课的影响。使用一个为期 6 年的小组，我们发现 2020 年队列的学生在五分之三的测试科目中经历了显着的学习损失，学校平均数学成绩下降了 0.17 个标准差和荷兰语成绩（阅读、写作、语言）与之前的队列相比，标准差为 0.19。这一发现在考虑学校特征、四年级标准化考试和学校固定效应时成立。鉴于观察到的大效应量，学校停课的影响似乎是学习进度损失和学习损失的结合。此外，我们观察到学校内部和学校之间的不平等在数学方面上升了 7%，在荷兰语方面上升了 8%。学习损失与观察到的学校特征相关，因为弱势学生群体的学校经历更大的学习损失。