The corona pandemic has also been affecting school lessons for two years. According to a study, the ability to read suffers as a result – it has deteriorated massively in fourth graders in Germany.
According to a new study, the reading skills of fourth-graders in Germany declined significantly during the corona pandemic.
Among a total of almost 4,300 elementary school students tested, children in the fourth grade in 2021, after a good year of restrictions caused by the pandemic, had “substantially lower” reading skills than fourth graders in 2016. This is the result of a representative study by the Institute for School Development Research at the University of Dortmund (IFS) published on Tuesday. On average, the children miss half a school year.
Particularly critical moment
Reading competence – fluent and meaningful reading – is acquired centrally in elementary school. It is considered a key qualification for the educational path. “The results are alarming,” the study said. The fourth grades are a particularly critical time because of the imminent move to secondary schools.
After frequent switching between distance and face-to-face learning and class cancellations, the research team found performance drops across the board in all groups among the fourth graders. Accordingly, the proportion of strong and very strong readers fell from 44 percent (2016) to 37 percent. 28 percent can only read poorly or very poorly – five years earlier, at 22 percent, it was significantly less.
Girls perform before boys
On average, girls continue to read better than boys. The negative effects of the pandemic were found to be about the same in both cases, it said. The already significant difference between children with and without a migration background tended to become even greater. And fourth graders with unfavorable learning conditions – no desk of their own, no reliable Internet – lose even more than children with favorable conditions, according to the information.
For the study, data from a total of 4,290 fourth-graders at 111 schools throughout Germany were evaluated. Of these, 2,208 students completed the standardized IGLU reading skills test in 2016. In the early summer of 2021, after a good year of learning under pandemic-related restrictions, 2082 fourth-graders were examined with the test of the International Primary School Reading Examination (IGLU). According to the IFS, this is the first scientifically representative data on the status of the reading skills of fourth graders before and during the pandemic.
Source: Stern
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