Learning inequalities during the Covid-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis using the UK Understanding Society 2020 and 2021 data

2020年春天，由于新冠肺炎大流行，英国各地的学校普遍停课。学校于2021年7月开始分阶段重新开放，并于2021年1月第二次关闭。由此产生的向远程教育的过渡损害了学生的学习，并将教育活动的大量责任转移给家庭，从而加剧了社会经济地位在学习机会方面的不平等。当前关于学习损失的程度、新学校关闭的可能性、弥补学习损失所需的活动以及2021年学校评估的性质的辩论将受益于及时分析儿童在两次学校关闭期间所拥有的学习机会。我们的项目将提供这样的分析。它将使用2020年4月和2021年1月了解社会（USoc） Covid-19调查的纵向数据，提供关于2021年1月至3月学校关闭期间英国学习机会的最新见解。由于这两项调查都采访了相同的家庭，都是英国的代表，并且可以与之前的美国调查联系起来，我们能够构建一个丰富、可靠和纵向的数据集，其中包括大约1300名小学生和1500名中学生。Birgitta Rabe博士和Stephen Machin教授目前正在领导两个独立的ESRC项目，研究Covid-19大流行对教育学习机会、国家考试成绩和高等教育参与的影响（分别为项目ES/V015222/1和ES/V010433/1）。虽然他们的横断面研究设计侧重于特定的时间点，但我们的项目是第一个使用涵盖两次学校关闭的面板数据来提供学习机会的纵向分析。新的USoc调查是由2021年1月宣布的新学校关闭引起的，因此通过ESRC时间关键Covid-19呼叫申请。我们将分析在第一次和第二次学校关闭期间，学校作业的吸收情况（反映学校提供的内容和家庭参与作业的方式）是否发生了变化，以及优势家庭和弱势家庭在学校作业方面的差距是否缩小或扩大。我们使用广泛的特征来定义优势，包括：父母的职业类别；家中是否有电脑；工作模式，如在家工作和休假；还有家庭结构。在我们之前的研究中，我们建议在学校关闭的情况下，可以通过为学生提供更好的信息技术访问和提供在线学术导师来弥补不能在家工作的父母的缺席来纠正学习上的不平等。由于我们在学术界的现有关系，一个明确的传播计划，将与南安普顿公共政策的合作交付，我们希望在第一次学校关闭期间匹配我们之前对学习不平等的研究的影响，其中包括在100多个国家和地区的网点上展出，如卫报，与国会议员迈克尔汤姆林森和艾伦怀特黑德的影响会议，以及为苏格兰政府的影响事件贡献。我们的研究将使政策制定者和从业者能够评估远程学习是否在第二次过渡到家庭教育期间有所改善，以及需要哪些新政策来减轻学校关闭的后果，并为未来可能的学校关闭做好准备。

The spring of 2020 saw a widespread and prolonged closure of schools across the UK due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Schools began a phased reopening in July 2021 and in January 2021 closed for the second time. The resulting transition to distance schooling has impaired students' learning and transferred to families a great deal of responsibility for educational activities, thus exacerbating inequalities in learning opportunities by socio-economic status. The current debate on the extent of the learning loss, the possibility of new school closures, the activities that are necessary to remediate the learning loss, and the nature of the 2021 school assessment would benefit from a timely analysis of the learning opportunities that children had during the two school closures. Our project will provide such an analysis. It will use longitudinal data from the April 2020 and January 2021 Understanding Society (USoc) Covid-19 surveys to offer the most recent insights into learning opportunities in the United Kingdom during the January-March 2021 school closure. As both surveys interviewed the same families, are representative of the UK and can be linked to previous US surveys, we are able to construct a rich, reliable and longitudinal dataset of around 1300 children in primary school and 1500 children in secondary school. Dr. Birgitta Rabe and Professor Stephen Machin are currently leading two separate ESRC projects on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on educational learning opportunities, attainments at national exams and higher education participation (respectively projects ES/V015222/1 and ES/V010433/1). While their cross-sectional research design focuses on specific points in time, our project is the first to use panel data covering both school closures to offer a longitudinal analysis of learning opportunities. The newer USoc survey was prompted by the new school closure, which was announced in January 2021, hence the application through the ESRC Time Critical Covid-19 Call. We will analyse whether the uptake of schoolwork - which reflects both the school provision and how families engage with it - changed between the first and the second school closure and whether the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged families in schoolwork has narrowed or widened. We define advantage using a wide range of characteristics including: parental occupational category; availability of computers at home; working patterns such as working from home and being in furlough; and family structure. In our previous study we suggested that in case of school closure inequalities in learning can be remediated by providing students with better access to IT and by providing online academic tutors to compensate for the absence of parents who cannot work from home. Thanks to our existing relationship within academics, a clear dissemination plan which will be delivered with the cooperation of Public Policy at Southampton, we expect to match the impact of our previous research on learning inequalities during the first school closure, which included being featured in more than 100 national and regional outlets such as the Guardian, impact sessions with MPs Michael Tomlinson and Alan Whitehead and impact event contributions for the Scottish Government. Our research will enable policy makers and practitioners to evaluate whether distance learning has improved during the second transition to home-schooling, and what new policies are necessary to mitigate the consequences of the school closures and prepare for possible future school closures.