Past event
Department of Economics Seminar with Professor Sandra McNally, University of Surrey The pandemic, pupil attendance and achievement
Abstract: Globally, children experienced long periods of absence from school during the Covid-19 pandemic. Absence rates remain very high in many countries, with huge increases in ‘chronic' absenteeism where pupils are regularly missing from school on a weekly basis. In this project, we investigate both how policy variation in restrictions in England influenced pupil absence during the pandemic and how this affected post-pandemic attendance and academic achievement. We find that absence induced by health and social policies that encouraged home working, closed businesses and restricted social contact during autumn 2020 caused higher rates of school absence and lower rates of achievement in subsequent years (2021/22).