Reacción a "Reactions: pandemic caused educational delays equivalent to a third of the academic year"

Ever since Visible Learning, John Hattie's milestone in empirical educational research, meta-analyses have been an integral part of educational discourse. They help to calculate a general effectiveness of pedagogical measures from the multitude of research results that are collected worldwide and at the same time make country- or culture-specific characteristics visible. The procedure of a meta-analysis is defined by standards (e.g. 'Prisma') and is adhered to in the present study. In this respect, it can be concluded that the article meets the state of the art in the field of meta-analyses. Incidentally, the results also correspond one-to-one with my own meta-analysis in this field. The more data does not provide a fundamentally new result, but confirms previous meta-analyses on a larger data base.

The relevance of the learning deficit found is immense because it has a direct impact on teaching. The lower the learning performance, the more difficult it becomes for learners to achieve the standards required by the curricula. As a result, a 'Generation COVID can be expected to form, which has suffered particularly badly from the pandemic. This particularly affects the youngest in the system from economically weak countries with educationally deprived backgrounds. This once again highlights the educational inequity in the country and also worldwide. What was not highlighted in the meta-analysis, but for which there is also relevant research, is that the pandemic also had a negative impact on psychosocial development and physical condition. In 'A Year to Forget' I evaluated and analysed this aspect.

Everything should be done to make up for the learning deficits. Unfortunately, many countries missed the first opportunities - keyword 'summer schools' - or implemented them absolutely unreflectively. As a result, even more time has been lost. From research we know (unfortunately) that learning deficits accumulate quickly and therefore become bigger and bigger. The earlier it is possible to counteract this, the better it is. The problem is certainly that in view of a (worldwide) shortage of teachers, there is above all a lack of personnel. In addition, the concepts have not been worked out and everyone is looking to digitalisation, which, however, has not proven to be a saviour in the pandemic, but rather a driver of educational gaps (especially in leisure time due to increasing and unreflective consumption). Rather, digitalisation is a driver of educational injustice because digital media are used differently depending on the level of education. Thus, the challenge for the next two or three years remains to offer sensible concepts here.

From an empirical point of view, summer schools are certainly an interesting option because they have been able to show in the past that they have a positive effect on all children and young people - but especially on learners from educationally deprived milieus. Here, we could benefit from research and existing concepts worldwide. Certainly, digitalisation also offers potential if it is implemented wisely. What has happened in many cases - pushing tablets into the hands of learners and hoping that they will have a positive effect - must be seen as a failure and it is high time to use the possibilities of digitalisation and at the same time avoid the dangers. Thus, digital media can be helpful for individual support, because with them learning paths can be implemented that always place learners in the area of challenging learning tasks and at the same time relieve teachers so that they can relate to the learners even more.