Children will face long term negative consequences due to prolonged school closures ordered by governments during the first three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.
The study entitled, The Forgotten Demographic: Assessing the Possible Benefits and Serious Cost of COVID-19 School Closures on Canadian Children found that provincial governments could have avoided these effects if they had listened to the evidence that was available to them at the time when those decisions were first being made.
“There was information available to policymakers early on showing school closures would do more harm than good,” said Paige MacPherson, co-author of the study.
However, MacPherson said, “schools were closed up until 2022 anyway, and Canadian children will be paying for it the rest of their lives.”
Ontario had the longest running school shutdown of 27 weeks, or 135 school days.
During this time children were out of the classroom and expected to continue learning virtually, while at home.
Nova Scotia closed its schools for 25 weeks, Alberta for 22 weeks and Manitoba for 20 weeks.
Provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I and New Brunswick were closed for slightly less time, all under 20 weeks and Quebec and British Columbia were closed for the least amount of time, for 11 and 10 weeks respectively.
The school closure figures are estimates based on government and media reports from the pandemic because, “there is no clear ‘official’ picture from governments as to how long schools were closed and how many classroom days students missed, a fact that should give readers pause,” the study said.
“Across Canada no province offered a consistent method of education that students (who would typically be in school) would receive during school closures, and shockingly, there is no detailed official national account of the closures and learning loss or other impacts.”
The school closures cited in the Fraser Institute report are a conservative estimate because they do not have data on decisions made by school boards to close individual schools for intermittent periods of time during local Covid-19 outbreaks.
The report makes note of the fact that there was already substantial evidence that children posed little risk of serious illness or dying as a result of contracting Covid-19. Additionally, there was plenty of evidence that shutting down schools would do little to contain or slow the spread of the virus.
While in the early stages of the pandemic, officials echoed the mantra, “stay home, save lives,” however the study points out that: “Quickly, data emerged about the actual risk posed by COVID-19 to various age groups. This new data should have guided Canadian governments’ responses to the risk, balancing virus transmission with the well-being of people and the economy. Yet school closures ended up spanning three school years, and the response was not a reflection of the data.”
The study emphasized that the school closures led to a whole host of well-documented societal issues that we are still facing now, including a 64% jump in mental health concerns for Canadians aged 15-24.
Overall student achievement is also in decline, average mathematic scores are down for grades three, six and nine.
Student absentee and dropout rates have also risen dramatically since the school closures and are disproportionately felt by poor and marginalized minorities.
