COVID-19 Learning Loss and Recovery: Panel Data Evidence from India

This includes parental reports of awareness about the program and availability in the village, whether children from the household attend the ITK centers (and how frequently), when children started attending the ITK center, and what parents believe the ITK volunteers do in the remedial sessions. [...] The sample is restricted to students between 55-95 months of age at the time of the test to ensure common support across the two years in the age of children. [...] This recovery by April-May 2022 compensates for ∼67% of the estimated learning loss of 0.7σ in December 2021 in mathematics and ∼56% of the initial loss of 0.34σ in Tamil. [...] The ITK effects in Table 5 equal ∼36.1% of the estimated recovery of 0.47σ in mathematics between January-May 2022 and ∼48.9% of the estimated recovery of 0.19σ in Tamil (see Table 3). [...] Accounting for the 57.3% attendance rate in ITK classes in the sample overall, the ITK program accounts for about 20.7% of the population-level catch-up in mathematics and 28% of the catch-up in Tamil between January and May 2022.