The high price of at-home learning
Ontario’s schools are again going remote for two weeks. We need to use this time to make investments to cut COVID-19 transmission in schools, so that schools truly are the first to open and can stay open through any future waves.
As we argued in a recent panel, there is mounting evidence of harms to students from switching to remote learning, especially for the youngest and most at-risk. Around the world children are learning less, due to less in-person education, with bigger impacts on at-risk students. Unfortunately, similar studies in Canada are not yet available because of a lack of data on students’ academic performance.
There is also evidence that early education has bigger benefits than later education, and that part of this is not just learning the “3Rs,” but also social and noncognitive skill development. At a time when young children’s social circles are extremely restricted, this may be more important than ever. This also suggests large benefits to keeping child care centres open and safe.
But to make policy decisions we need to know how big these benefits are.
In Ontario, schools were closed or remote for around half of the school year between March 2020 and June 2021. Supposing that students learned remotely at half the rate they would in person, that’s roughly equivalent to a quarter of a year less education.
Generally, each year of education increases incomes by eight to 12 per cent. So lifetime income losses could be in the order of two to three per cent. On average, that’s about between $27,000 and $41,000 in lifetime income per student (present value terms). Across two million students, keeping schools in person for that 25 weeks would have had an economic benefit of up to $80 billion.
And that is just the benefit to students’ learning. There are other benefits, including fewer business disruptions from parents needing to stay home to supervise their children.
And allowing for effects on growth rates leads to even bigger estimates, with one estimate valuing a quarter of a year more learning Canadawide at $940 billion.
By comparison, Ontario currently spends just over $30 billion per year on schools in total.
But while there are benefits to keeping schools open, there are extra costs during a pandemic.
Prioritizing vaccinations for students, teachers and school staff likely has only small additional costs compared with using existing vaccination facilities.
A test to stay strategy using rapid tests would cost roughly $550 million for 25 weeks, assuming each child and teacher needs on average two tests per week at $10 per test.
Providing PPE for teachers and students would cost roughly $200 million for two N95 masks per week for each child and teacher for 25 weeks.
The Ontario government had spent $600 million upgrading ventilation and adding air purifiers to classrooms as of August, but work remains to be done, particularly in older schools. This will be costly and take longer to do. But they would also likely be worthwhile, even without COVID, given the evidence of gains to health and learning from better quality classroom air.
Along with low-cost measures, such as increasing the amount of school time spent outdoors, this would help to cut risks of infection to kids and teachers, and reduce community COVID spread.
It’s also time to start planning investments in remediation for students who’ve lost the most. We need to be able to identify those kids and put more resources into their education.
These investments will cut the risk of COVID transmission in schools, helping keep them open now and stem the learning loss that’s costing Ontario’s future economy $3 billion per week. But they can also improve long-run health and learning of our students. The future of our kids — and our economy — depends on it.
CATHERINE HAECK IS A PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITÉ