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The 2014 paper "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood" examines the effectiveness of grade 3-8 teachers and their students' future income. It shows that 30 percent of the achievement gap between high and low- poverty schools is due to school closures and 50 percent is explained by the differential effect of remote/hybrid learning on poor and rich schools. School closures and switches to hybrid/virtual learning due to the pandemic adversely affected student achievement through several channels, including a decline in skill accumulation and a disruption of peer effects and peer-group formation. The 2021 study "Large Socio-Economic, Geographic and Demographic Disparities Exist in Exposure to School Closures" shows that school closures occurring from September 2020 to December 2020 were more common in schools with lower third-grade math scores and with higher shares of students who are racial and ethnic minorities, who experience homelessness, who have limited English proficiency and who are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. [Extracted from the article]

Analyses of policy documents and interviews with three Norwegian politicians revealed differences in how school leaders were described, positioned and ascribed responsibility in Norwegian education policy between 1990 and 2017. While how politicians positioned school leaders changed substantially during the period, a stable trait was vague descriptions of school leaders' responsibility. In 1990, school leaders were envisioned in a managerial position, above teachers, as employers. A more recent White Paper, from 2017, positioned school leaders closer to the teaching profession. The interviews showed that after the PISA-shock in 2001, politicians united across party lines in a 'new regime of understanding', downplaying traditional conflicts between Norwegian politicians. While Parliamentary politicians rhetorically disagreed, there was, underneath the policy discourse, a growing realpolitik consensus in questions of education policy. The study investigates policy descriptions of school leaders after 1990, when Management by Objectives was introduced in education. To position Norway in the international policy context, we draw on Stephen Ball's concepts fabrication, managerialism, magical solutions and neoliberal performativity. Three periods, with simultaneously appearing residual and emerging tendencies were identified. In conclusion, we question an apparent lack of ambitions for school leadership in Norwegian education policy. The article contributes with new insights into education policy fluctations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which refugee girls and young women were able to access learning during COVID-19 education closures in Pakistan, and the role that EdTech played in their learning access. It is based on findings from a survey with 403 Afghan refugee students, along with in-depth interviews with six young female refugees. The research shows that, while the majority of female refugee students were able to continue accessing education in some form during school closures, learning access was nevertheless limited, and a sizable minority were not engaged in any learning during this time. Teacher and institutional support was either absent or inadequate for many students, and infrastructure and devices that serve to support remote learning were not always reliable or accessible. Although male respondents were less likely than females to engage in independent study during the closures, refugee girls and young women were significantly less likely than their male counterparts to own the devices they needed for learning. The findings demonstrate how targeted investment in specific types of EdTech and teacher professional development, as well as supporting educational institutions in the establishment of remote learning opportunities, could help sustain learning during future periods of educational restriction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated school closures and movement restrictions that disrupted holistic development and adaptive coping in learners worldwide. Adaptive coping is also referred to as resilience. Holistic development covers the biophysiological, psychological, social, spiritual and educational domains of child development. Several researchers have explored the impact of developmental risks caused by school closures and movement restrictions on learner development. With this article we aim to present a synthesis of these reviewed papers. We reviewed 81 peer-reviewed papers that were published globally from 2020 to 2023. The focus of these papers was on biophysical, psychological, social, religious and academic development in learners. We did not develop a priori themes to guide us; instead, themes emerged from the articles that were reviewed. The findings show that although the lockdown restrictions were aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and saving lives, the imposed restrictions affected the development of learners in biophysiological, psychological, social, educational and religious domains. Furthermore, the findings show that the impact of the lockdown necessitated multisystemic interventions on different levels to enable learners to overcome backlogs and promote resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a new measure of human capital, which distinguishes both quality and quantity components, to estimate the long-term effect of the COVID-19-related school closures on aggregate productivity through the human capital channel. Productivity losses build up over time and are estimated to range between 0.4% and 2.1% after 45 years, for 12 weeks and 2 years of school closure, respectively. These results appear to be broadly consistent with earlier findings in the literature. Two opposing effects might influence these estimates. Online teaching would lower economic costs while learning losses in tertiary education (not considered here) would inflate them. Policies aimed at improving the quality of education and adult training will be needed to offset or, at least, alleviate the impact of the pandemic on human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interrupted time series (ITS) designs are increasingly used for estimating the effect of shocks in natural experiments. Currently, ITS designs are often used in scenarios with many time points and simple data structures. This research investigates the performance of ITS designs when the number of time points is limited and with complex data structures. Using a Monte Carlo simulation study, we empirically derive the performance—in terms of power, bias and precision- of the ITS design. Scenarios are considered with multiple interventions, a low number of time points and different effect sizes based on a motivating example of the learning loss due to COVID school closures. The results of the simulation study show the power of the step change depends mostly on the sample size, while the power of the slope change depends on the number of time points. In the basic scenario, with both a step and a slope change and an effect size of 30% of the pre-intervention slope, the required sample size for detecting a step change is 1,100 with a minimum of twelve time points. For detecting a slope change the required sample size decreases to 500 with eight time points. To decide if there is enough power researchers should inspect their data, hypothesize about effect sizes and consider an appropriate model before applying an ITS design to their research. This paper contributes to the field of methodology in two ways. Firstly, the motivation example showcases the difficulty of employing ITS designs in cases which do not adhere to a single intervention. Secondly, models are proposed for more difficult ITS designs and their performance is tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To control resurging infectious diseases like mumps, it is necessary to resort to effective control and preventive measures. These measures include increasing vaccine coverage, providing the community with advice on how to reduce exposure, and closing schools. To justify such intervention, it is important to understand how well each of these measures helps to limit transmission. Methods: In this paper, we propose a simple SEILR (susceptible-exposed-symptomatically infectious-asymptomatically infectious-recovered) model by using a novel transmission rate function to incorporate temperature, humidity, and closing school factors. This new transmission rate function allows us to verify the impact of each factor either separately or combined. Using reported mumps cases from 2004 to 2018 in the mainland of China, we perform data fitting and parameter estimation to evaluate the basic reproduction number R 0 . As a wide range of one-dose measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine programs in China started only in 2008, we use different vaccination proportions for the first Stage I period (from 2004 to 2008) and the second Stage II period (from 2009 to 2018). This allows us to verify the importance of higher vaccine coverage with a possible second dose of MMR vaccine. Results: We find that the basic reproduction number R 0 is generally between 1 and 3. We then use the Akaike Information Criteria to assess the extent to which each of the three factors contributed to the spread of mumps. The findings suggest that the impact of all three factors is substantial, with temperature having the most significant impact, followed by school opening and closing, and finally humidity. Conclusion: We conclude that the strategy of increasing vaccine coverage, changing micro-climate (temperature and humidity), and closing schools can greatly reduce mumps transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic was traumatic for everyone, and it revealed the vast inequity in public services to which people have access. Fortunately, community schools had been coordinating services to meet the needs of their families prior to the pandemic, and when schools closed in 2020, they kicked into high gear to provide for those needs. This paper reports on interviews with 15 community school coordinators in Baltimore conducted at the end of the pandemic period to find out how they went about meeting community needs. Findings indicate that coordinators played a crucial role in getting families' basic needs (i.e. food, shelter, clothing) met, but they also built trusting relationships, generating social capital in their neighborhoods set in racially segregated neighborhoods as a result of decades of redlining and policies meant to isolate Black communities. In the end, this paper argues that community school coordinators need more support to convert the social capital into further advocacy alongside the families with whom they work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the unintended consequences of emergency school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the impact of these closures on children and young people's United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and wider physical health rights. It addresses how States Parties should address and balance these rights during a crisis. It then contextualises the school closures, using global data mainly collated by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), exploring the direct health risk to children and young people from COVID-19 and the risk they posed to the wider community, finding both low. It then draws on findings from the Children and Young People's Commissioner, Scotland's COVID-19 Independent Children and Young People's Rights Assessment (ICRA) and wider literature identifying numerous unintended rights breaches, focusing on the rights breaches experienced by three particularly vulnerable groups of children and young people, namely those (i) at risk of physical or sexual violence; (ii) with additional support needs; and (iii) experiencing poverty and deprivation. Recommendations are made as to how to avoid breaching children and young peoples' physical health rights in future emergency school closures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The authors aim to analyze the inequality in accessing distance learning during COVID-19 school closures. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use the Household Pulse Survey, which is an effort by the United States (US) government to measure the well-being of American families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors employ a regression analysis to estimate the inequality in accessing distance learning by race and household income. Findings: Disadvantaged children from nonwhite and low-income families have much less access to distance learning, including less access to online classes, digital devices and the Internet. Schools are critical providers of the Internet and digital devices to children from disadvantaged households. Schools and parents devote more attention to these nonwhite children by spending extra time on their learning activities. Originality/value: This paper estimates the inequality in accessing distance learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Also, the authors analyze the responses of schools and parents toward this inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to adopt a learning-based approach to portray the impact of Covid-19 on state school services in Italy, with a specific focus on the role of street-level bureaucrats and the triggering of co-creative processes. Design/methodology/approach: The study proposes a qualitative system dynamics (or SD) approach describing the implementation of Covid-related educational policies in Italy. An insight model, made of causal loop diagrams, integrates the selected multi-disciplinary literature and institutional sources, secondary data from national and local reports (about Palermo, the fifth largest metropolitan city in Italy) and insights from a panel of school street–level bureaucrats. Findings: The study provides an insight into the impacts of governmental decisions (school closures and the subsequent need to activate distance learning during the first wave of Covid-19) at a local level. Specifically, it portrays the influences of managerial and professional discretion, infrastructural equipment and socio-economic factors favouring/deterring co-creative educational processes. Practical implications: The SD model highlights vicious/virtuous circles in policy implementation and suggests new managerial paths for education, more routed towards public value creation and less attached to bureaucratic procedures and the unquestioning application of performance culture. Originality/value: The paper proposes an original and holistic approach to dealing with policy making in education and its managerial features. The research findings are considered important, not only to face the current emergency, but also to pro-actively think about the post-Covid era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In particular, it is interesting to note that the effects are similar whether looking at the summer or the fall of 2020 although practices at German schools were different in these two periods (e.g. schools operating at partial capacity in the summer versus full capacity in the fall). This paper shows that in Germany, schools played a limited role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 over the summer and fall of 2020. School holidays in Germany vary across states following a calendar decided years in advance and thus provide variations in school closures/openings that are credibly exogenous to the spread of the virus. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion a Distancia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The shock of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the human capital formation of children and youths. As a consequence of this disruption, the pandemic is likely to imply permanent lower levels of human capital. This paper provides new evidence on the impact of COVID-19 and school closures on education in Latin America by exploiting harmonized microdata from a large set of national household surveys carried out in 2020, during the pandemic. In addition, the paper uses microsimulations to assess the potential effect of changes in human capital due to the COVID-19 crisis on future income distributions. The findings show that the pandemic is likely to have significant long-run consequences in terms of incomes and poverty if strong compensatory measures are not taken soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of natural hazards on education systems are an understudied subject. This paper conducts a systematic review of the literature on multiple hazards and school education to explore hazard-induced disruptions in school education and the determinants of its vulnerability and resilience. The PRISMA framework is adopted to examine how indicators of vulnerability are clustered into various components for school vulnerability assessment. As the involvement of school children is vitally important in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and management at the local, regional, and global levels for resilience development in school education, the study also reviews school children's participation in initiatives from various international organizations. The review results show that participation by children in DRR is generally weak due to the authoritarian tendency of society and lack of trust in the ability of children. It is observed that damaged infrastructure causes school closures for prolonged periods, leading to discontinuity of education. The review also highlights the lack of policies in implementing the Comprehensive School Safety Framework and the role of social networks in building resilience at schools. Future research should provide clear guidelines on children's participation in DRR and the linkage between disruptions of school education and critical structural damage due to disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic on school‐age children and their families. Changes to their daily lives were examined through the lens of their physical, mental, and emotional well‐being. An analysis of current literature was conducted examining the emerging research on the pandemic's effects on families. A case example is provided to offer a narrative snapshot of the many experiences faced by children and families throughout school closures and stay at home orders. The paper concludes with implications for providers and further research with special attention paid to the emergence of telehealth and implications for treatment. Practitioner points: Telehealth practice proved to be an effective intervention madality during COVID‐19.Effective intervention strategies during times of crisis requires collaboration.It is improtant to consider the impact of crisis such as COVID‐19 on healthcare providers well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of longitudinal research conducted in Ethiopia exploring the effects of COVID-19 school closures on children's holistic learning, including their socioemotional and academic learning. It draws on data from over 2,000 pupils captured in 2019 and 2021 to compare primary school children's dropout and learning before and after school closures. The study adapts self-reporting scales used in similar contexts to measure grade 4-6 pupils' social skills and numeracy. Findings highlight the risk of widening inequality regarding educational access and outcomes, related to pupils' gender, age, wealth and location. They also highlight a decline in social skills following school closures and identify a positive and significant relationship between pupils' social skills and numeracy over time. In conclusion, we recommend a need for education systems to promote children's holistic learning, which is even more vital in the aftermath of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação is the property of Ensaio: Avaliacao e Politicas Publicas em Educacao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Teenage is the phase of multiple transitions which involve biological as well as psychological changes. G Stanley Hall referred to this age category as 'storm and stress' because of the difficulties and disturbances associated with it. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an unprecedented challenge for teenagers, adding to their woes. Sudden lockdown, school closure, confinement at home, and other challenges brought an entirely different set of areas of concern for them. Based on the empirical findings, this paper has attempted to explore and understand the challenges faced by adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic concerning the changes that occurred in their daily lives. It is based on the data collected through an online questionnaire from 127 teenagers and in-depth interviews with 11 school-going students from Delhi. The domains studied are changes and challenges at the levels of health, well-being, studies, exams, career anxieties, familial relations, and changing dynamics of relationships with schoolmates and peers. It also tries to understand responses and resilience among teenagers during the lockdown period. The paper provides suggestive interventions for creating a facilitative environment to reduce anxieties among teenagers and ensure their health and wellb-eing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on children's and parents' time use, academic and socio-emotional skills, and well-being. The authors find that children's learning time decreased significantly during the first school closures, particularly for low-achieving students, but increased slightly with online instruction. Parental assessments of learning at home were mixed, with some academic parents believing it was as effective as learning in school. The study also highlights the importance of age distinctions and suggests further analysis on the relationship between parental time investment and socio-emotional outcomes. The findings have implications for policy recommendations and addressing educational inequalities. [Extracted from the article]

Global access to deworming treatment is one of the public health success stories of low-income countries in the twenty-first century. Parasitic worm infections are among the most ubiquitous chronic infections of humans, and early success with mass treatment programmes for these infections was the key catalyst for the neglected tropical disease (NTD) agenda. Since the launch of the 'London Declaration' in 2012, school-based deworming programmes have become the world's largest public health interventions. WHO estimates that by 2020, some 3.3 billion school-based drug treatments had been delivered. The success of this approach was brought to a dramatic halt in April 2020 when schools were closed worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures immediately excluded 1.5 billion children not only from access to education but also from all school-based health services, including deworming. WHO Pulse surveys in 2021 identified NTD treatment as among the most negatively affected health interventions worldwide, second only to mental health interventions. In reaction, governments created a global Coalition with the twin aims of reopening schools and of rebuilding more resilient school-based health systems. Today, some 86 countries, comprising more than half the world's population, are delivering on this response, and school-based coverage of some key school-based programmes exceeds those from January 2020. This paper explores how science, and a combination of new policy and epidemiological perspectives that began in the 1980s, led to the exceptional growth in school-based NTD programmes after 2012, and are again driving new momentum in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article is part of the theme issue 'Challenges and opportunities in the fight against neglected tropical diseases: a decade from the London Declaration on NTDs'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we project Skills in Literacy Adjusted Mean Years of Schooling (SLAMYS) for the working age population in 45 countries and quinquennial time periods until 2050 according to various population scenarios. Moreover, we integrate the effect of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic on these projections. Adult skills are projected using the cohort components method. They can help in assessing the potential consequences of the recent trends for the adult population, particularly the workforce, whose skills are essential for the jobs contributing to economic growth and development outlooks. Our projections are novel as they take into account both the amount of schooling and quality of education and also consider the changes in adult skills through lifetime. Projections show that the adult skills gap between countries in the Global North and countries in the Global South will likely continue to exist by 2050, even under very optimistic assumptions–but may widen or narrow depending on the demographic development trajectories specific to each country. Moreover, the loss of learning due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbates inequalities between countries. Particularly, in countries where schools have been closed for a prolonged period of time and the infrastructure for effective online schooling is lacking, the skills of cohorts who were in school during the pandemic have been severely affected. The fact that the duration of school closures has been longer in many low- and middle-income countries is a serious concern for achieving global human capital equality. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is projected to erase decades-long gains in adult skills for affected cohorts unless policies to mitigate learning loss are implemented immediately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School closure is one of the most debated measures undertaken to contain the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic has devastating health and socio-economic effects and must be contained, but schools play a vital role in present and future well-being, capabilities and health of children. We examine the detrimental consequences of both the closure and reopening of schools, by focusing on inequalities in the challenges affecting children and their families. This paper is grounded on Irish and Italian data from a multi-national longitudinal qualitative interview study. Research participants articulated a variety of issues and challenges that highlight inequalities in access to education during school closures, in the supportiveness of home setting, and in school preparedness to reopen, often mirroring or exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. The reported unequal lived experiences indicate that some harms are actionable, and already suggest some potential harm mitigation strategies. We conclude by advocating for enhanced public consultation to help mitigate the consequences of public dilemmas in general, and to help detect and tackle inadequacies and inequalities for school children through and beyond the pandemic, by learning from the experience of the concerned actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to thoroughly examine how students in Serbia experienced their education through distance learning during the 2020 Spring school closures due to the pandemic. Schoolchildren's multigenre narratives about learning during school closure were elicited by online surveys; qualitative thematic and values analyses were conducted; and data was further analysed by cluster analysis, ANOVA, and t-tests. A total of 45 lower and upper secondary school students produced 106 narratives providing 429 thought units for analysis. Altogether, 6 themes and 26 value codes were identified. They demonstrate the wide range, complexity, and nuanced positioning of students' experiences towards the new situation, their role in it, and the role of others i.e. teachers and the technology itself. The paper draws implications on the policy and educational-psychological and methodological level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters in rural and peripheral areas have increasingly turned away from mainstream parties and towards right‐wing populist parties. This paper tests the extent to which political decisions with adverse local effects—such as school and hospital closures—can explain this electoral shift. I theorize that political decisions such as these substantiate a perception of a disconnect between "ordinary" people and the politicians in power in day‐to‐day experiences. Using data on 315 school closures and 30 hospital closures in Denmark from 2005 to 2019 in a generalized difference‐in‐differences design, I find that mayors lose about 1.6 percentage points of the valid votes in areas where they close a school. Furthermore, I find that right‐wing populist parties increase their support in both local and national elections when a local school or hospital is closed. These findings provide insight into the electoral consequences of political decisions with adverse local effects and thus contribute to our understanding of the rise of right‐wing populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares approaches to accountability in US charter schools and English academies. We examine the development and main characteristics of these two types of schools before assessing how they are accountable, to whom, and for what. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, we explore the consequences of the accountability mechanisms in each jurisdiction. Our comparative analysis assesses the different and multiple forms of accountability to which charter schools and academies are subject. We discuss the similarities that exist in the two jurisdictions, albeit that the most consequential sanctions – closure of charter schools and transfer of academies – differ between countries. The final section concludes and highlights policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the professional situation of school principals during COVID-19 in Argentina, where one of the longest school closures in the world was maintained. It analyzes the existence of burnout, concerns, constraints and needs of 252 principals at the end of the 2020 school year. The results indicate that there is a double phenomenon of Emotional Exhaustion and Personal Accomplishment, while tensions with regulations and working conditions are evidenced. We found a leadership open to the context, with greater autonomy and a strong emotional commitment, with implications and challenges for the post-pandemic future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The move to remote learning during Covid-19 school closures left children who had no access to e-learning infrastructure without options to continue their education. In this paper we present evidence from a large-scale para-teacher intervention which brought learning resources to the homes of children cut-off by school closures. Over the 6.5 months of intervention, children enrolled in the intervention saw an average increase in test scores of 1.87 SD, with greater gains for those with lower baseline assessment scores. With these gains achieved at a cost of 5.48-7.39 USD per SD, the intervention was extremely cost effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Propose: To review published Physical Activity (PA) on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents aged 5 to 18 years during COVID-19 pandemic-induced school closures. Methods: From the database creation to April 2022, 10 databases are retrieved, with 4427 records filtered, 14 included in this research. The research takes Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) evaluation standards. Results: The thesis selects 14 studies from 6 countries, involving 400009 children and adolescents. These studies happened during the lockdown of COVID-19 (from December 2019 to April 2021). During the lockdown of COVID-19, schools were closed, which was considered part of a more extensive lockdown. Schools were closed for 1 to 4 weeks. There were 10 high quality studies (71.4%) and 4 medium quality studies (28.6%). 4 studies report that the pandemic reduces the time of PA but increases the time of watching screen and sitting. 10 studies (71.4%) identify that PA is positive for the mental health, because it helps reduce mental symptoms to a certain extent, especially anxiety, depression, and emotional disorders. 5 studies show that PA may not improve the mental health of children and adolescents under 12 during the pandemic. 4 studies indicate that the influence of PA on mental health of children and adolescents is determined by the amount of activity, including the extent, intensity, frequency, and duration, etc. Conclusions: In this narrative synthesis of reports from the class suspension period, reports that PA has a improve on the mental health of children and adolescents to a certain extent. it is found that PA may be helpful in reducing mental health symptoms of children and adolescents who are influenced by class suspension because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, stakeholders of the mental health of children and adolescents around the world should recommend PA because it is a practicable and beneficial way for long-term mental support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected many areas and contexts of today's society, including school and family. Several studies focused on the worldwide effects of school closures on students' learning outcomes, context, and well-being. However, the data emerging from these studies are often inconsistent and fragmentary, highlighting the need of a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. This need is especially urgent for the countries with the most severe school closure, like Italy. This systematic review aims to collect the opinions of parents, teachers, and students on: other dimensions of Italian primary school students affected by school closures, beyond academic performance; hypothetical agreement between the opinions of parents, teachers, and students regarding the different effects of school closures on Italian primary school students; possible differences between the effects of school closures on Italian primary school students and the students in other countries. Our search was conducted using PRISMA 2020 guidelines on Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus, and EBSCOHost. The results obtained from 34 articles revealed a strong concern on the part of all stakeholders involved in learning during the pandemic, with evident negative effects for Italian school students. The constraint on distance learning led to a drastic change in everyone's routine, and a negative emotional change on the part of young students. Parents and teachers generally considered distance learning to be ineffective for the education of their children and students; they encountered technical-practical difficulties in the use of electronic devices for participation in school activities; overall learning deficits on the part of students, especially in mathematics, as confirmed by INVALSI results were also found. The investigation reveals a condition of shared emotional and academic performance difficulty, and a further challenging circumstance for students previously at risk of marginalization. Further research in this field is paramount to identify new and adequate recovery strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered shelter-in-place orders and school closures, many turned to remote schooling as a means for delivering vital instruction while observing public health guidelines. However, the swift shift to remote schooling highlighted an area of significant educational inequity across the United States, especially in urban districts and immigrant households: technology access. Centering the experiences of Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers of emergent bilinguals with disabilities in New York City, this paper presents how technology served as both burden and utility for linguistically-, economically-marginalized families and shares how direct multilingual home-school communication was the most supportive yet scarce resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Corona Virus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively impacted teaching and learning globally, imposing widespread closure of schools from the elementary to tertiary levels. As of 14 April 2020, teaching activities of over 1.75 billion students globally were disrupted in about 200 countries that have implemented full or partial lockdown across the world. At the time of writing, the duration of the current pandemic cannot be ascertained. Therefore, the teaching and learning process should also adapt to the new normal, which includes suitable social distancing, self-isolation and other disruptive guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization. Thus, more than ever, COVID-19 has now emphasized the necessity to embrace different and flexible methods of teaching and, by extension, learning. Therefore, e-teaching and e-learning have emerged as complementary solutions that reduce disruption to educational activities. Despite having a solution in online teaching to reduce the effect of COVID-19 on education, it's noteworthy that the solution is not available to every educator, learner and school, especially in developing countries. In developing countries, especially across Africa, lack of awareness of the existing online teaching resources and their suitability for remote attendance teaching and lack of skill sets required for using the resources are the issues impeding online teaching. This paper reviews and evaluates twenty-two (22) remote attendance teaching resources, their special features and system requirements. The technical requirements, suitability, and limitations of each application are considered. The implementation challenges of using the resources are discussed, and some solutions are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a parameter identification methodology of the SIRD model, an extension of the classical SIR model, that considers the deceased as a separate category. In addition, our model includes one parameter which is the ratio between the real total number of infected and the number of infected that were documented in the official statistics. Due to many factors, like governmental decisions, several variants circulating, opening and closing of schools, the typical assumption that the parameters of the model stay constant for long periods of time is not realistic. Thus our objective is to create a method which works for short periods of time. In this scope, we approach the estimation relying on the previous 7 days of data and then use the identified parameters to make predictions. To perform the estimation of the parameters we propose the average of an ensemble of neural networks. Each neural network is constructed based on a database built by solving the SIRD for 7 days, with random parameters. In this way, the networks learn the parameters from the solution of the SIRD model. Lastly we use the ensemble to get estimates of the parameters from the real data of Covid19 in Romania and then we illustrate the predictions for different periods of time, from 10 up to 45 days, for the number of deaths. The main goal was to apply this approach on the analysis of COVID-19 evolution in Romania, but this was also exemplified on other countries like Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland with similar results. The results are backed by a theorem which guarantees that we can recover the parameters of the model from the reported data. We believe this methodology can be used as a general tool for dealing with short term predictions of infectious diseases or in other compartmental models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates responses of household debt to COVID-19-related data like confirmed cases and confirmed deaths within a neural networks panel VAR for OECD countries. Our model also includes a plethora of non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions. We opt for a global neural networks panel VAR (GVAR) methodology that nests all OECD countries in the sample. Because linear factor models are unable to capture the variability in our data set, the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) method permits to capture this variability. The number of factors, as well as the number of intermediate layers, is determined using the marginal likelihood criterion and we estimate the GVAR with MCMC techniques. We also report δ-values that capture the dominance of each individual country in the network. In terms of dominant countries, the UK, the USA, and Japan dominate interconnections within the network, but also countries like Belgium, Netherlands, and Brazil. Results reveal that household debt positively responds to COVID-19 infections and deaths. Lockdown measures such as stay-at-home advice, and closing schools, all have a positive impact on household debt, though they are of transitory nature. However, vaccinations and testing appear to negatively affect household debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most SMEs experience economic collapse and even insolvency due to a lack of sufficient governmental support, particularly those working in growing nations like Egypt with a heavy focus on SMEs' growth and political and economic instability. As a result, this paper seeks first to measure the consequences of COVID-19 on financial performance (FP) by comparing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with listed corporations in the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX). Second, we examine the impact of governmental interventions on this association. Our sample includes 26 SMEs in the Tamayoz EGX and the highest 30 firms listed in the EGX30. We applied pooled ordinary least square regression, paired sample test, and Barron and Kenny's test. We used daily stock market returns from January 2020 to November 2020. The proliferation of COVID-19 has an influence on stock prices in both the EGX30 and Tamayoz stock indexes. We furthermore find a partial mediation of income support, facial-covering, school closures, and restrictions on international movements on the linkage between COVID-19 and FP for SMEs. The stock prices listed in EGX30 seem more sensitive to governmental interventions than Tamayoz EGX. The findings confirm governmental interventions would have a significant role in the firm's FP during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in managerial expertise and political incentives associated with local government form may affect local government spending levels as well as the allocation of resources. This paper explores the latter possibility by estimating how the distribution of resources in council‐manager and mayor‐council municipalities responds to a positive fiscal shock resulting from the abolition of a municipality's court. We find that court abolition has a distinct effect on the allocation of resources in council‐manager and mayor‐council governments. As expected, mayor‐council municipalities allocate the marginal dollar to policing. However, council‐manager municipalities react to court closure by reducing police expenditures over the long‐term. Applications For Practice: 1.Municipal court abolition has a distinct effect on the allocation of resources in council‐manager and mayor‐council governments.2.Governments with a popularly elected leader of the executive branch (mayor) devote the marginal dollar to policing. This is not true of governments without a mayor.3.Further research is needed to better understand how political incentives (local government form) and rules governing police‐generated revenue distribution (municipal courts) interact to (dis)incentivize investment in policing and specific revenue‐generating activities.4.Understanding how the incentive structures created by local government institutions affect police funding levels is key for scholars and practitioners interested in police reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inner-city school systems serving marginalized populations around the world are hindered by undemocratic and anti-public, political forces given global neoliberalism. This paper highlights a three-year case study of community organizers' efforts to resist such forces and increase school access, equity, and local control in Detroit, MI (USA). Authors emphasize how the leadership of African American mother organizers was particularly instrumental to positive change. Literature on educational activism, leadership, and community organizing help frame the organizational and political value of the organizers' efforts. In-depth interview, observation, and artifact data further reveal how the activist-mother-organizers, motivated by their spiritual beliefs and liberatory aims, guided effective educational reform campaigns to oppose school closure and cultivated critical hope among their fellow organizers through a process the authors name as "spiriting urban educational justice." Spiriting urban educational justice involves enacting border crossing and boundary spanning activities to navigate placed-based politics and seek educational equity with spiritual clarity and drive. Authors discuss how school and district leaders can learn from this process and collaborate with activist-organizers who serve as spiriters of justice to improve urban schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic effects of COVID-19 containment measures using daily global data on containment measures, infections, and economic activity indicators, such as Nitrogen Dioxide ( NO 2) emissions, international and domestic flights, energy consumption, maritime trade, and mobility indices. Results suggest that containment measures had a significant impact on economic activity—equivalent to about a 10 percent loss in industrial production over 30 days following their implementation. Easing of containment measures results in an increase in economic activity, but the effect is lower (in absolute value) to that of tightening. Fiscal measures used to mitigate the crisis were effective in partly offsetting these costs. We also find that school closures and cancellation of public events are among the most effective measures in curbing infections and are associated with low economic costs. Other highly effective measures like workplace closures and international travel restrictions are among the costliest in economic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION COVID-19 remains pandemic and public health measures included school closures following a precautionary principle in that many previous epidemics (e.g. influenza) were mainly transmitted by children. This paper reviews school outbreaks to date, including in Malta. METHODS The internet and the medical literature were searched for reports of school outbreaks of COVID-19 and measures implemented in efforts to contain school spread. RESULTS Schools in several countries experienced outbreaks and some were related to insufficiently strict measures while others were due to older children and adolescents flouting restrictions. The different measures employed by different countries in their schools are displayed. DISCUSSION With adherence to the usual measures, schools can open safely with minimal risk to their communities in areas of low COVID-19 transmission. Vaccination is probably the ultimate solution to pandemic control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a difference-in-differences (DID) framework to estimate the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) used to fight the 1918 influenza pandemic and control the resultant mortality in 43 US cities. The results suggest that NPIs such as school closures and social distancing, as implemented in 1918, and when applied relatively intensively, might have reduced individual and herd immunity reducing the life expectancy of people with co morbidity, thereby leading to a significantly higher number of deaths in subsequent years. It would be difficult to draw any inference regarding the predicted impact of NPIs as implemented during the Covid-19 crisis as influenza and Covid-19 are two entirely different viruses and nowadays' pharmaceutical technologies can limit these medium-term impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on 51st Konstanz seminar taking place in 2020. Topics include annual symposium bringing together experts from academia and central banks as well as young scientists for an intensive exchange; and digital money getting exposed to the risk where payments being impossible in case of intermittent network or server failures.

This paper builds on a ‘situated learning’ theoretical perspective to explore the experience of parents and guardians in supporting their children’s e-learning activities during the COVID-19 lockdown in Tanzania. The study adopted an exploratory qualitative research design. Data were collected using telephone interviews and open-ended questions (using google forms), which inquired parents’ and guardians’ experience in supporting homebased e-learning activities among students during the COVID-19 lockdown. The paper argues that giving students free access to online learning materials during COVID-19 lockdowns is paramount. However, parents’ and guardians’support through sharing one’s phones must be monitored to safeguard learners from accessing irrelevant materials. Findings show that parents and guardians had different experiences in supporting their children’s learning, such as accessing irrelevant materials shared across WhatsApp groups. Parents/guardians further faced some difficulties in tracking and affirming the quality and efficacy of the e-learning materials because of their inadequate knowledge of the national syllabus for various subjects. This study suggests a need for substantial investment in elearning course development in the country, particularly the preparation of experts who can develop e-learning materials to serve the lower levels of education based on the national curricula. The study urges stakeholders to make policy decisions and support early career teachers in e-learning course development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how protective effects of intergenerational closure correspond with conflict networks in school classes. Taking a multilevel ecological perspective, we also consider networks' socio-spatial conditions. In a first step, we use ERGMs to analyze the association between parental contact and students' friendship ties, i.e., intergenerational closure (IC). Then, we utilize spatial regressions to analyze direct and moderating effects of a school's neighborhood on conflicts in the 135 German class networks (N = 3143 student measurements). In accordance with Coleman's theoretical notions, we find consistent negative effects of IC on the (standardized) density of the conflict networks. Moreover, we show that IC's impact is particularly strong in neighborhoods with a relatively high concentration of minorities. The results are in line with our theoretical considerations on multilevel network ecologies and the selective pressure of IC against conflict ties. Practically, our results provide evidence that fostering connections among parents (e.g., by implementing opportunity structures for parents to meet) might help to prevent deviating behavior in schools, especially in neighborhoods with relatively large proportions of ethnic minorities. • We elaborate a multilevel model of the network ecology of intergenerational closure (IC). • We analyzed effects of IC and socio-spatial structures on conflict networks. • Results on 135 class networks (ERGMs; spatial regression) reveal a negative effect of IC on conflicts. • Interpersonal conflicts occur more often in neighborhoods with higher proportions of migrants. • However, we find a strong effect of IC on decreasing conflicts in these neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effect of in-person schooling on youth suicide in the United States. We show that youth suicide rates historically declined during summers and rose again earlier in counties with an August school starting date. We document a departure from this pattern at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: youth suicides fell 25 percent in March 2020, when schools closed, and remained low throughout summer. Leveraging county variation in the timing of reopening, we find that returning to in-person instruction increased youth suicides by 12–18 percent. Analysis of Google search data suggests that bullying is a likely mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread school closures and a consequent pause in school food programs (SFP), stakeholder groups soon found alternate methods for delivering meals and snacks to students. This paper examines the breadth of school food programming in Canada during the pandemic. SFPs collectively offered meals (breakfast was most frequent), food boxes, and gift cards and average weekly distributions were over 10,000 meals. In most cases, the programs provided enough food/coupons to feed multiple or all household members. Almost half the programs received funding from provincial/territorial governments and around two-thirds received charitable contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments implemented many non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to suppress the spread of COVID-19 with varying results. In this paper, country-level daily time series from Our World in Data facilitates a global analysis of the propagation of the virus, policy responses and human mobility patterns. High death counts and mortality ratios influence policy compliance levels. Evidence of long-term fatigue was found with compliance dropping from over 85% in the first half of 2020 to less than 40% at the start of 2021, driven by factors such as economic necessity and optimism coinciding with vaccine effectiveness. NPIs ranged from facial coverings to restrictions on mobility, and these are compared using an empirical assessment of their impact on the growth rate of case numbers. Masks are the most cost-effective NPI currently available, delivering four times more impact than school closures, and approximately double that of other mobility restrictions. Gathering restrictions were the second most effective. International travel controls and public information campaigns had negligible effects. Literacy rates and income support played key roles in maintaining compliance. A 10% increase in literacy rate was associated with a 3.2% increase in compliance, while income support of greater than half of previous earnings increased compliance by 4.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools have a duty of care to children that extends beyond educational performance to include wellbeing and welfare. Yet, research has highlighted the tensions that arise when 'care' and 'learning' are treated as binaries, especially when schools operate within unequal socio--economic conditions. Extended COVID-19 school closures brought these issues into sharp relief, highlighting the central role of schools as a front line service in the lives of poorer children. This paper provides qualitative insights into the classed experiences of extended school closure and the role and response of schools through the eyes of parents, teachers and principals in Ireland. We frame these responses in the context of the provision of a careful education, exploring the role of normative and affective relations in teaching and learning. Questions are posed in relation to schools as care regimes and the 'mission creep' between educational and welfare provision in schools serving poorer children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]