A lost generation? The impact of COVID-19 on high school students’ achievements

Abstract This paper estimates the effect of a full year of the Covid-19 pandemic on school performance in Italy, focusing on students at the end of upper secondary school who are about to enter the labour market or start university without having had the opportunity to recover. Using longitudinal data from standardised tests for the student population nationwide, we use difference-in-differences models to analyse the performance of two cohorts of students: a cohort that has never been exposed to the pandemic and the cohort that graduated in 2021. We find that the pandemic had a substantial negative impact on students’ performance in mathematics and reading (approximately 0.4 s.d. in both domains). A similar loss is observed in 2022, suggesting no recovery post-pandemic. Low-achieving students suffered the most, widening the gap between strong and poor performers. The relative position of girls compared to boys improved. Contrary to the findings of the existing international literature, inequalities by parental education remained largely unchanged.