COVID-19 school closures and Chinese children's school readiness: Results from the natural experimental data

Aims

To determine the associations between COVID-19 school closures and school readiness skills for Chinese kindergarteners.

Design

We utilized the natural experimental condition created by local COVID-19 outbreaks in 2022 (Study 1) to compare school readiness skills of children whose kindergartens were closed for 5 months (Group 1) with children whose kindergartens stayed open (Group 2). We further compared the school readiness skills of one pre-COVID-19 cohort (Cohort 2019) with one COVID-19 cohort (Cohort 2021) from a fifth kindergarten (Study 2).

Samples

For Study 1, Group 1 included 445 children and Group 2 included 584 children aged 4–6 years. For Study 2, Cohort 2019 included 156 children and Cohort 2021 included 228 children aged 3–6 years.

Measures

For both studies, survey data on four school readiness skills were collected from parents. Additionally, Study 1 collected parental locus of control data from parents.

Results

Controlling for covariates, Study 1 revealed that Group 1 and Group 2 did not differ in terms of language and emergent literacy or approaches to learning. However, Group 1 scored lower than Group 2 on health and well-being and arts and imagination. Study 2 revealed that Cohort 2021 scored higher than Cohort 2019 on language and emergent literacy but lower on the other three skills.

Conclusions

The associations of COVID-19 school closures with Chinese children's school readiness skills were not uniform, with a positive relation with language and emergent literacy and negative associations with health and well-being, approaches to learning, as well as arts and imagination.