First graders who missed kindergarten during COVID closures showed the greatest school-readiness loss in basic counting and numeracy skills against pre-pandemic cohorts: d = 0.16 after three months of closures and d = 0.23 for the cohort entering school a year later¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3 · i1 small
Currency · newest study 2023 · checked against its sources 2026-10-23 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i1 Compared with pre-pandemic cohorts, first graders assessed after the first wave of kindergarten closures showed the greatest learning loss in numeracy skills (16 points, d = 0.16), and the cumulative loss in the cohort starting school a year later was a quarter of a standard deviation (d = 0.23), significantly larger than the short-term loss. The comparison is between cohorts, not a randomised one. → Gyöngyvér Molnár & Zoltán Hermann 2023

Evidence¶

Gyöngyvér Molnár & Zoltán Hermann 2023¶

Gyöngyvér Molnár & Zoltán Hermann. (2023). Short- and long-term effects of COVID-related kindergarten and school closures on first- to eighth-grade students' school readiness skills and mathematics, reading and science learning. Learning and Instruction, 83, 101706. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2022.101706

q3 · i1 · associational · r3

Regression analysis of eDia diagnostic assessment data comparing 1st graders in autumn 2020 and 2021 with pre-pandemic samples, controlling for school characteristics, gender and age (a robustness check used only within-school variation). The loss is the cohort difference the authors attribute to the closures; as a before-and-during comparison of different cohorts, not a randomised design, it cannot rule out other pandemic-period differences. The article reports "a quarter of a standard deviation (d = 0.23; 23 points)" cumulative numeracy loss, significantly larger than the initial d = 0.16 loss.

"The greatest learning loss (16 points, 16% of one standard deviation, d = 0.16) was detected for numeracy skills (SD = 100). A year later, the cumulative impact of the kindergarten closures in numeracy and basic maths skills was a quarter of a standard deviation (d = 0.23; 23 points), which proved to be significantly larger (F (1, 269) = 3.98, p = .046)"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Number Sense — outcome: instruction changes it
• Time and Continuity — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Kindergarten closures hit children in low-SES schools hardest in basic counting and numeracy skills (d = 0.2 in 2020; d = 0.3 in 2021), widening inequalities — related
• The negative effect of COVID remote learning was largest among lower primary low-SES students, reaching 25, 20 and 33 points (d = 0.25, 0.20, 0.33) in mathematics, reading and science by autumn 2021 — related
• No SES difference was found in kindergarten children's learning loss for reading precursors and inductive reasoning — related
• One year or more after the first lockdown, students had not recovered the learning deficits caused by Covid-19 school closures — related
• Students in The Netherlands lost on average 3.16 percentile points (0.08 SD) in achievement during the 8-week COVID-19 lockdown — related
• COVID-19 learning deficits arose early in the pandemic and have neither closed nor substantially widened since then — a broader claim this one bears on
• Preschool counting skills and number knowledge directly predict formal arithmetic skills in primary school, together accounting for 40–46% of variance — related
• The COVID cohort scored significantly lower than the control cohort across the whole study duration — related