2020 report to the NSW Department of Education: evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on NSW schools

This report focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students and teachers in NSW government primary schools. In 2020, schools in 190 systems around the globe moved to a period of learning from home due to the pandemic. These school closures represent unprecedented disruption to teaching and learning for billions of students. Speculation about the impact of COVID-19 and learning from home on student academic achievement has been widespread, relying heavily on evidence from previous crisis situations. As a result, we’ve seen school systems and governments draw on estimations based on modelling from international, short-term, small-scale disruptions to schooling caused by dramatic events, such as natural disasters and school shootings. However, the size and scale of disruption caused by COVID-19 is truly unprecedented and cannot be directly compared with these earlier accounts. To date, there has been little empirical evidence of what actually happened to student achievement during the closedown period.