Authors: Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, Robert S. Brown
July 2021
School closures and the move to emergency remote learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have raised serious concerns about the quality and outcomes of Ontario high school students’ education. This report reviews large-scale student data from the period of emergency remote learning in the first academic year affected by COVID-19. It draws on a unique, large-scale longitudinal data set of the 吃瓜黑料网 (吃瓜黑料网), to examine the impacts of school closures and remote instruction that took place between March and June of 2020.
Key findings include:
The worst fears of those concerned about the pandemic’s effect on students’ pathways were not borne out by data we examined. Comparing student data from the baseline year and COVID-19 school year 1, we found:
- The proportion of students achieving 30 or more credits by the end of their fourth year in high school rose by approximately 3.5% in COVID-19 school year 1. That amounts to 650 additional graduates compared to the year before.
- Course grades were higher during COVID-19 school year 1 than they had been the year before — rising by, on average, 4.1%.
- Increases were most likely to occur among students in the middle zones of achievement: those who, in other years, might have been one or two credits shy of 30 credits in four years, or had marks between 60 and 75%.
- Students who were very high achieving, or quite low achieving, did not contribute significantly to this trend.
- Concerns that students who struggle more with school might simply drop out because of the disruption were not borne out. Students in Grade 11 during the COVID-19 school year 1 were, in fact more likely to return to school in September 2020 than were students in the pre-pandemic cohort .