Anders, Jake;
Jerrim, John;
de Guevara Rodríguez, María Ladrón;
Marcenaro-Gutierrez, Oscar David;
(2025)
The rise in teenagers skipping school across English-speaking countries following the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from PISA.
Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
10.1007/s11092-025-09470-z.
(In press).
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Abstract
Many countries are grappling with the long shadow that COVID has cast over their education systems, including dramatic increases in absence from school. This paper presents new insights into this issue by investigating how the proportion of teenagers skipping school has changed following the COVID-19 pandemic across the developed world. We find that this problem is mainly confined to industrialised English-speaking nations, especially affecting teenage girls. In contrast, the proportion of 15-year-olds skipping school remains similar to pre-pandemic levels in most other members of the OECD. Counter to much of the previous literature on COVID-induced learning loss, we find no evidence of a link between student truancy and length of school closures. Our results do highlight, however, that English-speaking nations risk falling behind their international competitors unless radical action is taken to reduce the growing number of teenagers regularly skipping school.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The rise in teenagers skipping school across English-speaking countries following the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from PISA |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11092-025-09470-z |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-025-09470-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Truancy, PISA, Skipping school, COVID-19, School closures |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Learning and Leadership UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Learning and Leadership > Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216787 |
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