Reading and math skills development among Finnish primary school children before and after COVID-19 school closure.

This study quantified the possible learning losses in reading and math skills among a sample of Finnish Grade 3 children ( = 198) who spent 8 weeks in distance learning during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. We compared their reading and math skill development trajectories across Grades 1, 2, and 4 to a pre-COVID sample ( = 378). We also examined if gender, parental education, maternal homework involvement, and child's task-avoidant behavior predict children's academic skills at Grade 4 differently in the pre-COVID sample compared with the COVID sample.