Learning Loss and Students' Social Origins during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it intends to establish the intensity of learning loss in reading and mathematics experienced in Italy by fifth, eighth and thirteenth graders because of school closures owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it aims to check whether school closures have affected the educational disparities associated with students’ families’ socioeconomic status and three other possible inequality factors: geographic area of residence, migrant status and high school track. To estimate these two possible effects of the pandemic, we use INVALSI data collected in academic years 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 and rely on a counterfactual approach based on coarsened exact matching, where students belonging to the 2020-2021 cohort represent the treated group and those of the 2018-2019 cohort make up the control group. Our results indicate that the learning loss is definitely severe among students attending grades thirteen and eight, while it is less pronounced and involves only mathematics among fifth graders. Furthermore, our analyses show that the intensity of the learning loss is substantially the same irrespective of students’ social origins and their remaining ascriptive traits. A tentative explanation of this counter-intuitive result is presented.