Oecd covid survey eag indd

particularly for the most disadvantaged. 
During 
school closures, children relied on their caregivers 
to provide for their developmental and emotional 
needs. Parents, having to balance childcare and 
work responsibilities, amid the uncertainty of a 
looming economic crisis and employment instability, 
may have faced additional stress, and found it 
difficult to provide the nurturing learning environment 
at home children need to develop. In a recent 

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18
© OECD 2021
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
survey conducted by the OECD on ensuring the 
continuity of ECEC during the pandemic, the most 
cited challenge faced by families was parents’ 
or caregivers’ lack of time to support children’s 
learning at home (OECD, forthcoming
[6]
). Some 
countries targeted specific measures to ensure the 
return of children to ECEC after school closures. 
For example, in Denmark, the Minister for Children 
and Education required municipalities to conduct 
proactive outreach efforts towards children aged 
0-6, in particular towards those from disadvantaged 
backgrounds. With the same goal of supporting 
families, face-to-face school activities in pre-primary 
education resumed at the beginning of June in 
Portugal.
»
Setting up effective remote learning strategies 
is particularly difficult for young children. 
Watching screens and being restrained in chairs 
may also be undesirable for young children’s health 
and well-being (WHO, 2019
[7]
). Among countries 
that responded to the Special Survey on COVID-19, 
about 60% reported making use of online platforms 
to support pre-primary children’s learning during 
the pandemic, compared to almost all countries 
at primary and lower secondary level. Other 
strategies, like take-home packages and television, 
were also seldom used, with only 40-50% 
of countries reporting doing so at pre-primary 
level, compared to more than 70% at primary and 
lower secondary levels, although the lower uptake 
may also be due to the shorter periods of closures 
at pre-primary level (Figure 6). Contrary to higher 
levels of education, distance learning is not always 
considered an effective method of teaching at 
pre-primary level. For example, Belgium, Germany 
and the United Kingdom do not consider distance 
learning a valid form of delivery to account for 
official instruction days at that level. In addition, a 
number of countries cited the low quality of digital 
learning strategies and content for young children 
and the number of computers/tablets available in a 
household as some of the major hurdles impeding 
the use of digital technology among pre-primary 
children. The digital competency of teachers may 
also have led to lower uptake of distance learning. 
Only half of the countries reported training
pre-primary teachers for remote teaching during 
the pandemic, compared to 78% among primary 
school teachers (OECD, forthcoming
[6]
).
»
ECEC provides reliable childcare support to 
parents returning to work after the confinement 
periods. 
As confinement measures relax and the 
economy reopens, parents will require reliable 
childcare solutions to return to work. However,
in some countries, the provision of ECEC is strongly 
dependent on small privately owned businesses, 
which struggled to break even during the crisis.
In the United States, 50% of parents who have not 
yet returned to work cite childcare as a main reason 
according to a survey conducted in 2020 (US 
Chamber of Commerce Foundation, 2020
[8]
).
0
20
40
60
80
100
Pre-primary
Primary
Lower secondary
Share of countries (%)
Online platforms
Take-home packages
Television
Figure 6•
Share of countries offering the following distance learning solutions during the pandemic in 2020 
and/or 2021
Source: 
OECD/UIS/UNESCO/UNICEF/WB (2021
[1]
).

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19
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
Public funding to pre-primary education increased in about two-thirds 
of countries with data over the 2019/20 academic year
Families are also finding it increasingly difficult to 
bear the financial burden of childcare costs amid the 
economic and employment uncertainty brought about 
by the pandemic. To support families and ensure the 
continuity of pre-schooling, public funding to
pre-primary education increased in about two-thirds 
of countries with data over the 2019/20 academic 
year, a share similar to that at other levels of education. 
Whereas more countries increased the education 
budget to primary, secondary and tertiary education 
during the 2020/21 school year compared to 
2019/20, the share of countries reporting a budget 
increase on pre-primary education remained similar to 
the previous year (see Section 7).
Some countries have implemented specific financial 
support for childcare. For example, Austria temporarily 
waived the conditions to receive childcare benefits.
In Germany, access to child benefits has been 
simplified for families who have lost income due to 
COVID-19 (Abels et al., 2020
[9]
). Governments have 
also provided financial support to private ECEC 
settings, particularly in countries that rely strongly 
on them. For example, in Japan and Norway, the 
government continued to provide funding to cover 
operational costs in private ECEC settings when the 
centres were closed due to COVID-19. In addition, 
public funds also compensated ECEC centres in 
Norway for the loss of parental fees, which amounted 
to about 15% of total running costs (OECD, 2020
[10]
).

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20
© OECD 2021
3
Impact of COVID-19 on learning outcomes 
and examinations
Countries with the lowest educational performance tended to fully 
close their schools for longer periods of time in 2020
The results from the Special Survey on COVID-19 
show that some countries were able to keep schools 
open and safe even during the difficult pandemic 
situation. Social distancing and hygiene practices 
proved to be the most widely used measures to prevent 
the spread of COVID-19, but they imposed significant 
capacity constraints on schools and required 
education systems to make difficult choices when it 
comes to the allocation of resources. 
The level of COVID-19 infection rates appears 
unrelated to the number of days schools were 
closed. The number of days of school closures varies 
significantly even among countries with similar infection 
rates, although such policy may have been motivated 
by educational objectives, the capacity of national 
health infrastructures or other public policy objectives 
(Figure 7). 
However, the data show that schools were closed 
for longer periods of time in countries with lower 
educational performance in 2020. In fact,
15-year-olds’ performance on the OECD Programme 
for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 
reading test explains 61% of the variation in the 
number of days that upper secondary schools were 
fully closed in 2020. In other words, education 
systems with lower learning outcomes in 2018 lost 
more opportunities to teach in-person in 2020 than 
those with high performing systems. This is not simply 
an artefact of higher performing education systems 
operating in more favourable economic conditions. 
The relationship still explains 48% of the variation even 
after accounting for gross domestic product (GDP) per 
capita. It is thus expected that the crisis will not only 
amplify educational inequalities within countries, but 
also exacerbate the performance gap among them.
The pandemic has disrupted national examinations
Many countries rely on examinations to certify the 
completion of upper secondary and assess which 
students can progress to the next level of education. 
As a response to the COVID-19 crisis, a number of 
education systems have revised the content, format and 
mode of delivery of their national examinations. 
For the academic year 2020-21, the most common 
adjustments in upper secondary general education 
(67% of countries) were related to enhanced health 
and safety measures, such as extra space between 
desks to ensure social distancing during exams.
A significant share of countries (44%) also adjusted 
the content of examinations, for example, the subjects 
covered or the number of questions asked. These 

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© OECD 2021 
21
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
countries include Austria, the Czech Republic, 
Denmark, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, 
Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, 
Spain and Turkey. In Slovenia, for instance, there was a 
15% decrease in the content assessed and the number 
of examination papers at oral exams . The examiner 
also had the option to discharge one question if
s/he believed the subject had not been adequately 
addressed during school closures. Another common 
measure (33%) was to postpone or reschedule exams. 
This type of measure was implemented in Austria,
the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, 
Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal,
the Slovak Republic and Turkey.
Less common approaches have included adjusting the 
mode of administration (17%); introducing alternative 
assessments/validations of learning, such as appraisal 
of a student learning portfolio (17%); and cancelling 
examinations to use an alternative approach, such as 
calculated grades for high-stakes decision making 
(13%). 
A number of countries have taken steps to assess learning losses 
following school closures
Although remote learning can mean opportunities 
to explore new ways of teaching, there have been 
concerns about the learning losses associated with 
school closures (Engzell, Frey and Verhagen, 2021
[12]
; 
Hanushek and Woessmann, 2020
[13]
). As an attempt 
to address this issue, a number of countries have taken 
1
6
2
3
4
5
New Zealand
5. France
2. Netherlands
6. Norway
1. Switzerland
7. England (UK)
3. Portugal
4. Belgium
R² = 0.6104
Number of instruction days upper secondary schools were fully closed in 2020
Austria
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Poland
Slovak Republic
Sweden
Chile
Colombia
Estonia
Israel
Slovenia
Latvia
Lithuania
Costa Rica
Korea
Russian Federation
Turkey
Brazil
Mexico
Luxembourg
Spain
Greece
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
400
420
440
460
480
500
520
540
PISA 2018 performance in reading
Figure 7•
PISA 2018 performance in reading and number of instruction days upper secondary schools were fully 
closed in 2020
Note: 
The size of the bubbles represent the number of COVID-19 cases per million inhabitants from the start of the pandemic until 
31 December 2020. The larger the circle, the more cases of COVID-19 in 2020.
Source: 
OECD/UIS/UNESCO/UNICEF/WB (2021
[1]
); OECD database, March 2021. The number of COVID-19 cases per 
million inhabitants are from Roser et al. (2020
[11]
).

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© OECD 2021
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
steps to track learning outcomes and identify students 
in need of specific support. 
Standardised assessments can constitute a powerful 
tool to keep track of learning losses. In 2020, 44% of 
countries and economies with available data reported 
assessing students in a standardised way in upper 
secondary general education. These include Austria, 
Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
England (United Kingdom), Estonia, France, Italy, 
Korea, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland and the 
Russian Federation. In 2021, a slightly lower proportion 
of countries and economies (37%) implemented such 
assessments. All of the countries (with available data 
for both years) that used standardised assessments 
in 2020 kept this measure in 2021, except for Chile, 
Denmark and Mexico (Table 1). In Chile, between 
March and April 2021, 7 000 schools and
1.8 million students took the Comprehensive Learning 
Diagnosis (DIA) developed by the Quality Education 
Agency to measure students’ learning outcomes and 
assess their socioemotional situation following school 
closures. The study revealed lower learning outcomes 
in mathematics and reading, and highlighted students’ 
eagerness to go back to traditional ways of interacting 
with professors and peers. 
In terms of equity, reports based on standardised 
assessments from England (United Kingdom) and 
France raise concerns about a potential exacerbation 
of inequalities due to school closures. In England 
(United Kingdom), at the secondary level, learning 
losses in reading in the first half of the autumn 2020 
term were estimated at 1.8 months in the overall student 
population, and at 2.2 months among disadvantaged 
students. Similarly, at the primary level, learning 
losses represented around 1.7 months in reading and 
3.7 months in mathematics overall, but these losses 
reached 2.2 months and 4.5 months respectively 
among disadvantaged students (Education Policy 
Institute and Renaissance Learning, 2021
[14]
). This is in 
line with a study from the Netherlands showing that 
students from disadvantaged backgrounds suffered 
greater learning losses than their peers (Engzell, Frey 
and Verhagen, 2021
[12]
). Learning losses, however, are 
not irreversible. In France, for instance, the decline in 
reading performance and mathematics observed at 
primary level in September 2020 (i.e. following the first 
school closures in the spring 2020) had been reversed 
by January 2021. Students from disadvantaged 
schools, however, exhibited lower improvements in 
reading than their peers over the period (Ministère 
de l'éducation nationale, de la jeunesse et des sports, 
2021
[15]
).
Aside from standardised assessments, other common 
approaches to monitor student outcomes include 
formative assessments by teachers at the classroom 
level (67% of countries) and studies based on 
questionnaires to teachers, principals or school 
providers (41%). For instance, the districts’ education 
management in Israel conducted assessments at 
class level and sent questionnaires to principals to 
evaluate learning losses in mathematics, English and 
language studies. In Portugal, a diagnostic study 
was applied in a representative sample of schools to 
assess the students’ performance in certain subjects in 
specific school grades; the study and its results have 
proven to be important in the process of signalling 
and anticipating difficulties, and to support teachers 
in preparing the new school year. In Norway, survey 
and interview data were collected from students, 
parents and teachers, which revealed concerns 
about learning losses and a possible widening of the 
learning gap across students. Similarly, the results from 
a study by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre 
(FINEEC) revealed important disparities in parental 
support across students, which raised equity concerns 
knowing that students relied more heavily on home 
support in the absence of direct contact with teachers. 
In order to address this issue, the FINEEC highlighted 
the need to identify learners needing special support. 
The study also showed that students across education 
levels experienced study-related stress during the 
COVID-19 crisis. Together with monitoring equity 
in learning outcomes, keeping track of students’ 
emotional well-being during and after school closures 
can be important, as well-being in childhood and 
adolescence can be a strong predictor of emotional 
well-being later in life (Burns and Gottschalk, 2019
[16]
).

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23
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
Table1•
Implementation of standardised assessments following school closures due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 
2021