The Impact of COVID-19 on Primary School Learning and the Role of Community Mobilization During the Pandemic in India

This project will study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education and wellbeing of primary school-aged children in India. The researchers will take advantage of a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) conducted by Pratham between 2018 and 2019 across 200 schools and villages in the state of Assam, India. The endline data collection, covering 5,300 children and 4,200 caretakers, was completed in December 2019, right before the start of the pandemic. In this project, the researchers propose to conduct a follow-up survey round to study three novel questions. First, they aim to study how children’s learning outcomes and psychological wellbeing have been affected by the pandemic. Second, they aim to understand whether one of Pratham’s interventions – an out-of-school learning program managed by the local community – mitigated some of the negative consequences. Third, they aim to understand how families and communities have coped with respect to their children’s education when schools were closed.