How Does In-Person Learning Impact Student Achievement in the COVID-19 Era?

• In Event: Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on Education Systems Around the World

Abstract

Two years of the pandemic have damaged education significantly (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020), which seriously exacerbated the inequality and financial austerity (Hargreaves, 2020). In South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea), schools have adopted their operations in a way that combines online and in-person classes to cope with the unprecedented situation (Ministry of Education, 2020). This change brought a lot of concerns about the widening educational gap in Korea, resulting in a greater inequality of education over regions due to such disruptions to school operations and student learning. There have been various national-level case studies related to the achievement gap (e.g., Cai et al., 2020; Davis et al., 2020; Engzell et al., 2021). However, we find that empirical studies to identify the impact of in-person learning on educational gaps are insufficient.

In this paper, we conducted a comparative study in different regions in Korea, including urban (Seoul) and rural (Gangwon Province) regions, to reveal the disparate impact of in-person learning in narrowing educational gaps. To this end, we analyzed academic achievement results for middle schools applying a common national curriculum. Compared to previous studies using students’ perceptions, we analyzed actual achievement data in math and English in the first semester of each year from 2018 to 2020. With these data, we measured how this score resulted in a greater gap among mid-range students with two quantitative analyses. First, to analyze the impact before and after COVID, we compared two student groups transitioning from 8th to 9th grade employing a paired t-test of distribution between those two grades. Next, to understand how in-person learning impacted student performance, we conducted a regression analysis to investigate the influence of the number of school days on the educational gap in schools by region. To this end, we used mid-range (B, C, & D) grades for maths and English as the dependent variables and included the number of in-session school days, type of school, average house price, number of hagwon, and region as independent variables.

This study leaves several implications: First, COVID-19 has polarized academic achievement in Seoul and led to a decrease in achievement in Gangwon Province. Second, COVID-19 had an impact on academic achievement in Gangwon Province more negatively than that in Seoul. Third, in-person learning positively impacted the grades of middle school students in both areas. To summarize, we reveal that in-person learning before and after the start of COVID-19 positively impacted the proportion of mid-range students. These results suggest that a lesser degree of in-person learning degrades the students’ performance who are isolated at home without having enough educational support at home, resulting in greater educational inequality.

Authors

• Chol-Kyun Shin, Kangwon National University
  Presenting Author

• Youngeun An, Seoul Educational Research & Information Institute
  Presenting Author

• Soon-Young Oh, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author