Abstract:
Using a unique combination of student-level survey, sociometric and register data, this study examines whether the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schooling outcomes is conditional on students’ academic and social embeddedness in the school setting. We estimate the impact of the pandemic on the track recommendation level and the enrolled secondary school track by comparing sixth-graders who went through the transition from primary to secondary school during the first wave of the pandemic with a previous cohort in register data of the Netherlands. The individual estimated pandemic effect is then associated to student and parent information obtained through a survey in the two months preceding the pandemic. Results show that especially student self-efficacy, academic motivation, and to a lesser extent parental involvement are important buffers against pandemic effects. The centrality of parents in the parental network in schools is hardly associated to the extent to which the pandemic has affected schooling outcomes.
About the speaker:
Herman van de Werfhorst is professor of sociology at the EUI. He is on leave from the University of Amsterdam. His work concentrates on inequalities in and through education, using both comparative and longitudinal data and research designs. More specifically, Van de Werfhorst studies mostly inequalities by socioeconomic and migration background and gender in school careers, labour markets, and civic engagement. Van de Werfhorst is visiting fellow at the WissenschaftsZentrum Socialforschung Berlin (WZB). He is co-PI of two running data projects: PRIMS (on the social embeddedness of the transition from primary to secondary schools in the Netherlands), and ADKS (Adolescent Panel Study on Democratic Core Values and School Careers). You can read more about his background here: https://www.eui.eu/people?id=herman-g.-van-de-werfhorst.
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