Using a large-scale school readiness survey in Thailand, this paper presents empirical evidence of learning losses from school closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic for kindergartners. Overall results indicate that school closure during the outbreak of COVID-19 causes significant learning losses in cognitive skills, especially in mathematics and working memory. The negative impact is heterogeneous across several dimensions, including child gender, special needs, wealth, private tutoring, caregiver education, and parental absence. This paper also estimates daily learning gains, of which significant results confirm that going to school has significantly benefited young children, especially in receptive language, mathematics, and working memory.

本文通过在泰国进行的大规模入学准备情况调查，提供了幼儿园儿童因 COVID-19 大流行而因学校停课而造成的学习损失的实证证据。总体结果表明，COVID-19 爆发期间学校停课会导致认知技能的严重学习损失，尤其是数学和工作记忆方面。负面影响在多个方面存在差异，包括儿童性别、特殊需求、财富、私人辅导、看护者教育和父母缺席。本文还估计了日常学习收益，其中显着的结果证实上学对幼儿有显着的好处，特别是在接受性语言、数学和工作记忆方面。