Project CEMAPRE internal
| Title | How did Covid 19 Pandemic affect Students’ school achievement and expectations in the transition from Upper Secondary to Higher Education |
| Participants | Graça Leão Fernandes (Principal Investigator) |
| Summary | The COVID 19 Pandemic has strongly affected the education system, regardless of the level of education. The impact on initial schooling levels was stronger than on Higher Education (HE) given the greater vulnerability associated with younger ages. The literature review showed that the impact of the pandemic on education was huge and felt worldwide [WEF November 14, 2022]. The transition to online teaching was very fast, which had negative effects, causing a loss of learning and changing expectations about transition to Higher Education. This loss in a very important phase of the students' lives will have a negative impact since it is crucial in building foundational knowledge that will shape their future [Dorn et al. (2020)). The implementation of online classes required students to have computers\notebooks\cell phones and internet access to be able to follow the classes. For students from poorer families and with less education, this could only have led to serious learning failures and lack of motivation [Fricks,C.(2020)]. The pandemic affected the academic performance of students in the post-Covid 19 pandemic, leading to a setback in the trajectory to overcome the difference in HE graduates between the average levels of Portugal and the Eurozone [28.3% against 30.4% by 2021 (EUROSTAT DATABASE)] and the Millennium Sustainability Goals (Goal 4) subscribed by Portugal. Dorn et al. (2021), Garcia, E. & Weiss, E. (2020) and Mitchell, A. & Jaeger, A. (2018) drew attention to the fact that the socioeconomic status of the family determined how great was the loss in student learning and therefore, the impact on their school performance. The OECD PISA 2015 (OECD 2017) results emphasize the importance of expectations and motivation in decision-making on the transition to HE. In the Portuguese education system, the primary and secondary levels of education had to make the transition in about a month. In previous studies we looked for evidence on how a variety of factors, individual and economic characteristics of the family of origin, previous school failure, own employment situation, are responsible for school performance, dropout or delay in enrolling in the University education. And how the weight of these factors in the abandonment decision varies with the economic cycle. We also analyzed the impact of the economic cycle on the student's school performance, namely dropout or delay in enrollment in HE, and expectations\motivations in relation to the transition from USec to HE. We now intend to understand to what extent the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced these previous results. The literature review shows us a strengthening of inequality in access to HE, due to the impact of COVID 19 on household income, especially for those who did not recover from the 2011 crisis, as in Greece, as well as difficulties in accessing essential ICT to follow classes, etc. (Aristovnik et al 2020; Kara 2021; Tsolu et al 2021). It also reveals an increase in the levels of anxiety and depression in USec and HE students, boosted by the aforementioned situations of inequality (Aristovnik et al, op cit, 2020, Schmits et al 2021). |
| URL | https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-2023-glasgow/ |