Post Covid Era: Future of Economies and World Order
The Effect of Covid-19 on Primary School Enrollments: Evidence from Turkey
Elif Satılmış ErbayThe Covid-19 pandemic caused considerable changes in every division in life, including online learning integrated into the formal education system. Since it had been a new experience for students and teachers, most parents had expressed their concerns over the effectiveness of the learning process. Hence, both the direct impacts of the pandemic and policies adopted in this period have substantially changed educational outcomes. This study empirically analyzes how Covid-19 affected primary school enrollments in Turkey using administrative data. Estimated findings show that primary school enrollments decreased by 1.8% in the 2020/2021 academic year. The primary source of this decline is that 5-year-old children who would have gone to public schools in the absence of the pandemic did not attend school during the pandemic.