This report was written by William Thorn and Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, both Senior Analysts at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills.
Vivien Liu provided excellent research assistance and reviewed most existing studies on the first wave of lockdowns while doing an internship at the OECD. Gwénaël Jacotin and Vanessa Denis, Statisticians at the OECD, helped with the analysis and presentation of data. Sabrina Leonarduzzi prepared the report for publication. Alison Burke managed the publication process.
Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, and Dirk Van Damme, former Head of CERI, provided feedback on the report.
The report is an output of the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation’s (CERI) “COVID‑19 R&D Fund”, which was set up to analyse in a responsive way the educational impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report benefited from the comments of members of the CERI Governing Board on a first draft of the report: they are thankfully acknowledged. In particular, colleagues from France provided detailed comments. OECD member countries were also asked to check and provide any missing statistical study concerning their country.
The photo on the cover of this publication is a work (“Parco, 2020”) by the Italian artist, Silvia Camporesi. It is one of a series of photos taken by the artist in April 2020 during the period of lockdown in Italy. Camporesi was one of a group of Italian photographers of different generations commissioned to contribute to a project intended to create a visual archive of Italy during the health crisis. The project was supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture. The work of the photographers concerned has been shown in an exhibition entitled “Italia in attesa” (“Italy on hold”) at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.