Scholarly Journal Summary No. 2

 According to the study published by the International Journal of Educational Development, titled “Estimation of the fundamental learning loss and learning poverty related to COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico,” the state of learning in Mexico is in a major emergency due to prolonged school closures that lasted up to 48 weeks.

Learning loss is predicted to affect up to 80% of students worldwide, according to the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Leuven. However, the educational dilemma in Mexico is even worse as schools in Mexico closed for some of the longest periods around the world, and Mexico itself is a country with many students living in poverty. 

Prolonged absence from schools and a poor socioeconomic background are two of the biggest predictors of poor academic performance, and this was confirmed by the study carried out by Felipe J.Hevia, Samana Vergara-Lope, Anabel Velásquez-Durán, and David Calderón. 

Part of why Mexican schools were closed for as long as they were was because of a high concentration of both cases and deaths in Latin America. This contributed to students experiencing extremely high rates of learning loss, which is defined as a loss of academic progress or a reversal in academic skills.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics along with the World Bank also created the term learning poverty, which is defined as the inability to read and comprehend a simple passage by the age of ten years old. This helped to demonstrate just how bad the learning crisis is in schools in Mexico, and ensures a more complete understanding of how bad the crisis is as a whole.

The results of the study were broken down into three sections: a bigger picture view of how socioeconomic status affected learning loss, an estimation of the increase in learning poverty, and a comparison of the first two sections based on gender.

In the first section of results, the study confirms that a large learning loss occurred in those with a lower socioeconomic background. But it also showed that across the board, a significant learning loss occurred in every group of students, on every level.

A study of learning poverty in the second section showed similarly broad rates of learning poverty amongst every socioeconomic background, although it also showed that learning poverty did not disappear with age, as students as old as 15 years old were still experiencing some form of learning poverty. 

Lastly, a gender-based comparison of learning loss and learning poverty showed significant losses in learning. However, in math, girls from a lower socioeconomic background lost more, and boys from a higher socioeconomic background lost more compared to their peers of the same gender. 

The study’s findings and the authors of the study both agree with the United Nations that there is a need for a fairer and more equitable educational system that supports students from all socioeconomic backgrounds in Mexico.