The COVID-19 Pandemic and School

Empirical economics of education suggests a strong positive effect of education on the well-being of individuals and societies. This study shows that the school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic particularly affected the younger schoolchildren as well as the group of schoolchildren from socio-economically disadvantaged households, so that from the perspective of education economics a sustainable focus of support should be placed on these groups. International data on school closures show that Austria behaved similarly to most of the other countries studied in the initial phase of the pandemic. In the second phase between September 2020 and June 2021, however, schools were closed for a comparatively long time, while other countries got through the COVID-19 pandemic without further school closures. So far, only survey findings on the effects of school closures are available for Austria. The task now is to supplement these findings with standardised achievement tests that provide information on learning development during the COVID-19 pandemic and allow causal conclusions to be drawn.