No learning loss in Sweden during the pandemic: Evidence from primary school reading assessments

“Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to worldwide school closures, with a risk of learning loss. Sweden kept primary schools open, but it is unknown whether student and teacher absence and pandemic-related stress factors affected teaching and student progress negatively. In this study, reading assessment data from 97,073 Swedish primary school students (grades 1-3) were analysed to investigate potential learning loss. Results showed that word decoding and reading comprehension scores were not lower during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic, that students from low socio-economic backgrounds were not especially affected, and that the proportion of students with weak decoding skills did not increase during the pandemic. Study limitations are discussed. We conclude that open schools benefitted Swedish primary school students.

1. Introduction: School closures affected over 90% of the world's students early in the pandemic (UNESCO, 2020), and one year later almost half of the world's students were still affected by partial or full school closures…

Early models of effects on school closures during the pandemic (for the 2019-2020 school year) showed rather grim projections (Azevedo et al., 2020; Bao et al., 2020; Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Kuhfeld et al. (2020)…

A few studies have confirmed that school closures did have a particularly negative effect on disadvantaged students (Engzell, Frey, & Verhagen, 2021; Maldonado & De Witte, 2021), low-achieving students (Clark et al., 2021), and younger students (Tomasik et al., 2021).”