Impact of Covid-19 on the Academic Performance of the Secondary Students in Qatar

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 forced governments across the world to impose movement restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. Countrywide shutdowns were implemented, which led to the closure of educational institutions including suspension of in-person learning. School closures affected billions of students worldwide. As governments examined ways of ensuring continued learning, a majority implemented distance-learning models. Owing to the aforementioned measures, the topic of the impact of Covid-19 on school performance has now emerged. Currently, there are considerable conversations globally regarding Covid-19 causing school closures and its effect on academic performance among students. The current literature review examines the scientific literature related to the effect of Covid-19 on academic performance on secondary school students. The objective is to synthesize relevant evidence regarding the topic from diverse studies to understand how interruptions to school services due to Covid-19 affected educational outcomes and academic achievement among students. 

Schramm et al. (2021) investigated the relationship between Covid-19 and student grades at a high school in California. Specifically, the researchers considered the Covid-19 disruption and the emergence of distance learning models to understand the way the new models affected student grades. Consequently, the researchers used a case study methodology to explore the issue in which they selected one secondary school, the Pacific Grove High School in California, as the case for the study. The school shifted all its learning activities online in March 2020 and had about 600 students aged 14-18 and in grades 9-12. They examined 40,000 records comprising of grades of the students per course during the studied semester and focused on the period 2016 to 2021. The data was also coded to avoid identifying individual students. The researchers used the R statistical programming language to analyze the data. The findings show a slight improvement in grades during the online learning period in core courses. The researchers also found that online learning influenced the gender differences in grades D and F through stabilizing the grades besides resulting in high grades among female students on average compared to male students. Other observed effects include alleviation of test anxiety, helping students feel confident in their abilities, and pressure to perform from students, peers, or parents. Overall, the researchers concluded that online learning due to Covid-19 had a net positive effect on the case study school. 

Similarly, Engzell et al. (2021) evaluated the way school closures due to Covid-19 affected the performance of the primary school in the Netherlands. Considering that, national examinations in the country occurred before and after Covid-19 based movement restrictions, the researchers compared performance during the lockdowns with the same period in the previous three years. They sampled 15% of primary schools in the period 2017-2020 involving students aged 8-11 years in grades 4-7. They also analyzed 350,000 data sets comprising of biannual scores in core subjects besides considering other factors such as school features and demographics. The researchers investigated the effect of Covid-19 lockdowns on learning and students from less-educated families. They also examined differences in effects based on prior performance, subject, school grade, and sex. 

The data analysis procedure entailed an assessment of standardized tests in reading, spelling, and math besides an evaluation of the composite score of the three subjects. They changed the results into percentiles using different uniform distributions based on individual subjects, grades, and testing occasions. They also compared the baseline year of 2020 to the previous three years based on composite scores of student performance in the three subjects. Additionally, the researchers conducted a placebo analysis to confirm the reliability of their baseline specification, inspected performance on generic tests of learning readiness to identify what affected performance, and adjusted for loss to follow-up. The adjustment entailed discarding students who did not take tests, balancing control and treatment groups, and restricting the analysis to schools in which two-thirds of the students took tests after lockdown. They also used fixed-effect models to adjust the analysis to time-invariant confounding at the family and school levels. The researchers found that students engaged in less learning across all subjects and ages during lockdowns compared to typical study periods. Specifically, quantified performance losses reached three percentile points in which students from disadvantaged homes were affected disproportionately. Besides, for the less educated families, the performance losses were 60% higher than in the general population. The researchers concluded that the performance losses accounted for a fifth of the entire school year. 

Another study by Sintema (2020) investigated the potential effect of Covid-19 on student performance with a focus on grade 12 students. The researcher hypothesized that in 2020, Covid-19 would affect grade 12 students negatively concerning national examinations in three subjects including design and technology, science, and mathematics. The study was conducted in Zambia, a country that had just implemented a nationwide STEM education and with limited technological resources. The researchers used a qualitative design with a focus on a case study strategy in which three cases were included. A single public school was selected from Chipata district in which data collection entailed interviewing three teachers at the school who were selected using purposive sampling. The interview protocol included seven semi-structured questions. The researcher conducted telephone interviews with three science and mathematics teachers owing to movement restrictions imposed due to Covid-19. Each interview lasted for 20 minutes on average. An Android application was used to record the phone conversations before the researcher transcribed and analyzed the data using the constant appropriate qualitative data analysis procedures. The researcher found the potential adverse effects of Covid-19 on the education sector in Zambia due to the loss of contact hours for students in secondary schools and inadequate e-learning resources. Besides, the pandemic had potential negative effects on STEM subjects due to the expected reduced performance in national examinations. The researchers suggested that future studies could use both qualitative and quantitative techniques to examine the effects of the pandemic on educational planning nationally. 

Aji (2021) also investigated the effects of Covid-19 on the academic performance of senior secondary school chemistry students in Nigeria following the lockdown imposed in March 2020 to contain the pandemic. The main objectives of the researcher included investigating whether Covid-19 affects the academic performance of senior secondary school chemistry students and investigating whether Covid-19 affects the academic achievement of senior secondary school chemistry students. The researcher hypothesized that the mean scores of students in senior secondary school chemistry would not differ significantly before and during Covid-19 and the mean scores of the students would differ significantly before and during the pandemic. The researcher used a quantitative methodology in which a descriptive cross-sectional survey study design was used. The research occurred in Yobe State in which two senior secondary, including one public and one private, schools from the Bade local government, Gashua town were selected. The schools had 289 students but the researcher included a sample of 20 students for the study comprising of female and male students with diverse religious beliefs ad backgrounds. Data collection occurred before Covid-19 and during the pandemic period and entailed survey questions regarding student scores. T-test was used for analyzing data in which the researcher analyzed the data at a 5% significance level. The study findings demonstrate that all the formulated hypotheses were rejected in the studied schools. 

Other researchers examine the effect of Covid-19 on higher education institutions. For example, Gonzalez et al. (2020) investigated the effect of Covid-19 confinement on the performance of higher education students. Specifically, the study involved students from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain. The study intended to decrease uncertainties regarding the assessment process in higher education institutions during the pandemic to identify the effect of Covid-19 on the performance of students. Thus, the researcher sought to examine the learning strategies of students before and after Covid-19 confinements. The researcher hypothesized that Covid-19 confinement affected the performance of students significantly and Covid-19 affected the assessment process significantly. Two online platforms, including the e-valUAM and the Moodle platforms, were used for tests. The researchers also used different measurement instruments including the CAT theoretical model, multiple answer test, open answer test, and traditional tests to assess student performance in various subjects. The study population included 458 students and 3 different subjects including metabolism, design of water treatment facilities, and applied computing. The researchers divided the students into two groups, the control and experimental groups, to examine differences in assessments. 

The control groups comprised of students dealing with the metabolism and applied computing subjects during the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 academic years in addition to the students dealing with the design of water treatment facilities subject during the 2017/2018 academic year. For the last group, the researchers conducted a longitudinal study in the 2017/2018 academic year to examine the way rewards affected the learning strategies of students. The experimental group comprised of students dealing with metabolism and applied computing subjects during the 2019/2020 academic year. The experimental group corresponded to the third stage of the longitudinal study conducted with the students dealing with the design of water treatment facilities. The researchers studied the autonomous learning approaches in both groups based on the aforementioned measurement instruments. Once the researchers obtained correct autonomous learning measures, they developed an experiment to investigate the effects of the pandemic on the performance of students by comparing the results of the experimental and control groups in the entire assessment process. The experiments were conducted during the mentioned academic years for each subject and with 458 students. The researchers conducted statistical analysis on the results obtained from the different measurement instruments and using GraphPad Prism 6. 

The researchers found that Covid-19 confinement had a significant positive effect on the performance of students since students attained better scores in the different tests after the confinement. There were also significant differences between performance before confinement and performance after confinement. The positive effect of Covid-19 was significant in activities that did not change in format after confinement. Confinement also changed the learning strategies of students as students adopted a continuous learning habit, which enhanced efficiency. Thus, the researchers concluded that Covid-19 improved student performance by improving their learning performance. 

Maldonado and De Witte (2021) also highlight the effect of the Covid-19 crisis in the provision of education and the limited nature of studies about Covid-19 consequences. In a discussion paper examining the Covid-19 effect, the researchers assessed the effects of Covid-19 imposed school closures on standardized tests in Belgian Flemish schools during the final years of primary school. The study was conducted in the period 2015-2020 with different schools and across various subjects. The study was conducted in Flanders involving a network of catholic schools and students in the sixth grade. The researchers evaluated standardized tests that are administered at the end of the year in which they collected individual data about tests and combined the data of different subjects for a single student by identifying students with numbers to ensure anonymity. They also aggregated the data at the school level to compare different cohorts. The analysis was conducted at the school level. The researchers divided their sample into three periods during the analysis including a comparison of the 2019-2020 period, 2017-2020, and 2015-2020 while controlling for the test version. The analysis also entailed administrative data covering general school features including student numbers and gender distribution per school, number of teachers by age group, special needs schools, and the share of students with special needs, socio-economic background of students, and the immigration background of students. 

The researchers first conducted telephone surveys with school management to evaluate the Covid-19 situation during closures before sampling 1018, 1034, 1062, 1152, 1164, and 402 schools in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively. T-tests were conducted on the data before combining the various data sets from different schools into a panel of data set in which the data was structured to compare schools over different periods based on difference-in-difference estimation. The findings show that students from the 2020 cohort lost significantly concerning learning in all evaluated subjects. Besides, there was a notable increase in inequality across and within schools in 2020 while students with a low socioeconomic status lost more than did other students. 

A study by Lewis and Kuhfeld (2021) also demonstrates the way Covid-19 disrupted student academic performance by affecting disadvantaged students disproportionately. The study focused on investigating the effect of Covid-19 on mathematics and reading outcomes among students in the United States. The investigations illustrate that students performed poorly at the start of the school year following the pandemic compared to pre-Covid-19 years with low performances in reading and mathematics that experienced 3-7 and 9-11 percentile point reduction respectively. Even though all students had low achievements, disadvantaged students including those from marginalized and those with low socioeconomic status experienced disproportionate effects, especially those in grades 3-6. 

In the study, the researchers compared MAP Growth scores from fall 2021 of 6 million students in public schools in the United States in grades 3-8 with scores of students at the same level in fall 2019. Specifically, the researchers employed cross-sectional analyses to gain insights into student achievements during and before the Covid-19 crisis by calculating median percentile ranks of students during the aforementioned periods and the difference in the percentiles between the two periods. The researchers found that student performance in math and reading lag historical averages and low performing students before the pandemic gained less compared to high performing students. The researchers suggested that Covid-19 disruptions in schools affected the acquisition of math skills compared to reading skills significantly. The findings also highlight the inequalities regarding unfinished learning during the pandemic owing to its disproportionate effect on disadvantaged students. The researchers also noted that even though there is a return to in-person education, the Covid-19 effect in education is ongoing and disruptions to learning, particularly to vulnerable students continues. 

Breaux et al. (2021) who investigated learning experiences during the 2020/2021 school years and the effect of Covid-19 on high school students GPA found similar findings. In the study, a sample of 238 high school students comprising 55.5% male and 49.6 with ADHD from the U.S were recruited. Online surveys were conducted in which students reported their GPAs. The study found a significant reduction in GPA from the 2019/2020 to 2020/2021 school years. Besides, biological sex and ADHD status moderated the effect in which male students and those with ADHD received significantly lower GPAs compared to female students and those without ADHD. Disadvantaged students such as those with low socioeconomic backgrounds and the marginalized were affected disproportionately. 

Owing to the different effects of Covid-19 on the academic performance of students, Chen et al. (2021) note the various responses of schools to the pandemic and highlights the effect of the pandemic on student performance, particularly among disadvantaged students. According to the authors, the Covid-19 pandemic forced teachers to adopt e-teaching models to ensure safety. Nevertheless, online teaching does not offer similar benefits that in-person teaching does. Thus, the researchers conducted a teacher survey across the world to understand the effectiveness of e-learning during the Covid-19 crisis. Specifically, the researcher investigated the effect of e-learning on student learning based on the views of teachers owing to the knowledge of teachers about student performance. Teachers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, China, Canada, and Australia were surveyed in the October-November 2020 period. The researchers asked teachers to reflect on their experiences during the pandemic when schools adopted remote learning models. Teachers were required to rank the effectiveness of e-learning on a scale of 1-10 in which one demonstrated the least effect on academic performance while ten indicated comparable academic performance to normal in-person education. 

The findings show that e-learning led to better academic performance in Germany, Canada, and Australia with scores above five compared to other countries that had scores below 5. In contrast, for Japanese teachers e-learning led to poor results concerning academic achievement. On average, public school teachers gave scores of 4.8 compared to scores of 6.2 for private schools. Socio-economic status influenced the scores in which teachers from disadvantaged locations rated the effectiveness of remote learning with scores of 3.5 in which they argued that the pandemic worsened education inequalities. Nevertheless, teachers from private and wealthy schools reported better academic performance due to the availability of the required resources such as the internet and the necessary devices. The researchers concluded that the pandemic had disproportionate effects on disadvantaged students than on well-off students. Overall, the pandemic resulted in a learning loss of about 2 months for high schools even though disadvantaged students lost about 3 months of school time. 

Tomasik et al. (2020) analyzed data to investigate the effect of remote learning due to Covid-19 restrictions on schools. The authors note the absence of empirical evidence regarding the impact of Covid-19 based school closures in actual size and direction. They conduct their study in Switzerland following the halting of educational activities in March 2020 and their reopening eight weeks later. The closure resulted in the adoption of distance learning models. Thus, the objective of the researchers was to compare distance learning and in-person learning to identify the potential effect of the pandemic on learning progress. They formulated three hypotheses. In the first hypothesis, they stated that the absence of institutional schooling leads to slow progress or decreased competence, particularly for vulnerable students. For the second hypothesis, they stated that the institutional effect did not diminish completely since learning occurred in another way. They also hypothesized that the effect of school closures would be significant for young students compared to older students due to factors such as self-regulation abilities, cognitive scaffolding, and socioemotional strains of the pandemic. 

The researchers achieved their objective by recruiting the active users of the MINDSTEP system who completed at least a single teacher based evaluation in the period January 19, 2020-May 11, 2020. Students from grades 3-9 use the MINDSET system in Switzerland for French, English, German, and mathematics subjects. The researchers obtained data on German and mathematics assessments only. The study sample included 28, 685 students of which 13,134 students were from primary school while 15,551 were from secondary school. The age of students ranged from 9 years to 15 years in grades 3-9 respectively. Boys accounted for 50.3% while non-native speakers accounted for 30.8% in the primary school sample. For the secondary school sample, boys and non-native speakers accounted for 49.1% and 32.7% respectively. The researchers modelled the students in a second-order piecewise latent growth model based on strict invariance measurement for the study period. Specifically, they used the lavaan package of R to conduct all computations and addressed missing data with the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) technique. The findings demonstrate that school closures did not affect secondary students significantly concerning learning gains. Nevertheless, the closures slowed learning among primary school students. While distance learning was effective as an emergency measure, it does not benefit all students equally. 

Hammerstein et al. (2021) also consider the emerging evidence about the effect of Covid-19 on academic performance. The researcher conducted a systematic review regarding the differential and general effects of the pandemic on achievement in primary and secondary schools. The researchers searched for relevant studies dealing with the effect of Covid-19 on student achievement using the Web of Science database. Only articles published in the 1 March 2020-30 April 2021 period were selected. They searched the CCR-EXPANDED, ESCI, BKCI-SSH, BKCI-S, CPCI-SSH, CPCI-S, A&HCI, SSCI, and SCI-EXPANDED indexes. They also searched articles from pre-print servers including SocArXiv, EdArXiv, and PsyArXiv. The Risk of Bias in Non-Randomized Studies of Interventions technique was used to conduct the Cochrane Risk Assessment. The researchers selected eleven studies for the final analysis in which they obtained data about the differential and general effects of Covid-19, converted the general effects in various metrics to changes using SD, and computed the media of the effects. 

The study found that Covid-18 affect student achievement adversely, particularly among young students and disadvantaged students. Specifically, remote learning did not offer beneficial effects and their effects did not differ with the complete absence of teaching. Nevertheless, increased use of software for studying subjects and familiarity of students with remote learning enhanced student achievement in online programs. Systematic online materials also benefited low achieving students more than they did high achieving students. 

Researchers have also conducted studies in the Middle East concerning the effect of Covid-19 on educational achievement. For example, Khlaif et al. (2021) conducted a study to examine the challenges related to remote teaching in Afghanistan, Libya, and Palestine in middle school settings. Owing to the role of digital inequity and digital privacy in remote learning, the researchers adopted a qualitative methodology in which they obtained data using observations and semi-structured interviews. The researchers also recruited teachers, students, and parents using purposive sampling from the three countries and sampled 20 participants from each country to reach 60 participants. The sample included 30 students, 15 teachers, and 15 parents. The participants were interviewed in which they offered their lived experiences during the pandemic. The researchers also observed 60 online classes including four classes for each teacher. 

The interviews were conducted via Zoom and each interview session lasted for 20-30 minutes. Observations lasted for 50 hours. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. They analyzed the observation through documenting the class structure and audio-recording class sessions. The findings show that the quality of the learning content delivered remotely during the Covid-19 emergencies was low compared to content delivered in well-planned online sessions. Digital inequity also influenced online learning during Covid-19 negatively as disadvantaged students in remote locations lacked the required technological resources to access lessons. 

Ridge & Erfurth (2020) also examined the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the education sector in the UAE. The researchers highlight the unprecedented nature of the school closures across the world following the pandemic and the struggles by governments and school systems to ensure educational continuity for all students. Consequently, the researchers conducted their study intending to provide additional data regarding the impact of Covid-19 on local students besides other educational stakeholders in the United Arabs Emirates. The researchers used a quantitative methodology in which they used online surveys to collect data. Specifically, the study was conducted in mid-April 2020 within two weeks. The study sample included 700 participants composed of public and private school students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The composition of the participants includes 77% females and 23% males. Besides, half of the participants were UAE citizens. The rest comprised of Africans, North Americans, Europeans, and South Asians. The online survey had 49 open-and closed-ended questions. Besides the surveys, the researchers also conducted phone interviews with education experts. 

The findings show that all stakeholders in the study lack formal training for remote learning and teaching. Regarding academic performance, students reported finding it challenging to interact with teachers, which affected their learning significantly. Students also experienced increased workloads per day on distance learning in which students in public schools spent 5.6 hours on average in online classes and another 3 hours for homework and preparation. The researchers concluded that distance learning due to Covid-19 is demanding for students. Besides, Covid-19 related school closures exposed students with special needs or learning disabilities to significant disadvantages due to lack of adequate support. The study also illustrates that the effect of Covid-19 on education is extensive in the UAE owing to the lack of free public education for all students and the divide between socioeconomic groups. In particular, disadvantaged students are highly likely to lack the required resources to access learning. 

El Said (2021) conducted an empirical study about the academic performance of University students in Egypt to investigate the effect of Covid-19 on learning. The researcher identifies the sudden shifts to online learning globally and seeks to investigate the effect of this shift on learning. Thus, the researcher used a mixed-method methodology comprising of quantitative and qualitative methodology to investigate whether the academic performance of students differed between in-person and remote learning for the same course in different periods. Regarding the quantitative methodology, the researcher compared grade differences between in-person and online education to assess the academic performance of students. The grades were compared in four questions, mid-term examination, and final examination in which the independent variables included CGPA, credit hours, gender, and student level. The comparison period included spring 2019 for the in-person mode and spring 2020 for the remote learning mode during the pandemic. The researcher also assessed the satisfaction of students with distance learning using online surveys. 

Regarding the qualitative methodology, the researcher used online interviews to evaluate the experience of instructors with remote learning. Additionally, the study sample comprised 748 students from Future University, Egypt. The remote learning sample included 372 students while the in-person sample included 376 students. The demographic distribution of the sample included 57% male ad 43% female. Regarding the interviews, four professors were interviewed. 

The researchers operationalized academic performance using course grades in which they collected data about the grades for the two groups during the spring 2019-spring 2020 period. The researcher also posted the student satisfaction survey on the university portal in June 2020 to gather feedback from 435 students. The researcher compared grades for the two groups using t-tests while the distribution was analyzed using chi-square tests. An assessment regarding the effect of CGPA, age, credit hours, and gender was also conducted. The researcher did not find any statistically significant differences in the grades of students. Besides, the sudden shift to distance learning did not lead to a poor learning experience. 

Malik and Javed (2021) also identify the advantages of a well-planned e-learning model in terms of convenience and the challenges experienced when students shifted to online learning suddenly during the Covid-19 pandemic without proper planning. Thus, the researchers conducted a study to examine the effect of Covid-19 based e-learning on stress perceptions of students in Oman. They conducted their study at the University of Nizwa in Oman using a quantitative methodology in which data was collected using online self-administered questionnaires. The study sample included 966 students from various colleges. The researchers also used the perceived stress scales for assessing stress in which stressors could be academic, psychological, or social. The surveys were delivered via Google forms remotely to the participants using their university emails. It was a bilingual survey in English and Arabic. The survey was also included on the Moodle home page of the University to increase participation. The study was conducted from December 6 2020 to December 31 2020. The researchers also conducted a statistical analysis using the SPSS-20 software. The findings show that Covid-19 affected the mental health of students negatively. Female students experienced more stress symptoms than did male students. Besides, students from urban locations were more stressed than did students from remote locations. The researchers emphasized that high-stress levels among students are associated with reduced academic performance in which they found a negative association between the perceived academic performances of students with perceived stress. 

Alshaikh et al. (2021) identify the potential adverse effects of Covid-19 on the education process due to the imposed restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. Thus, the researchers conducted a study to investigate the effect of Covid-19 on the education process in Saudi Arabia. Another objective of the study was to examine the effect of the rapid changes on satisfaction among students in Saudi Arabian Universities. The researchers designed their study using the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework to examine the effectiveness of online learning during the Covid-19 crisis by identifying major aspects that affect the education process. The research is based on a quantitative methodology in which the researchers used online cross-sectional self-administered questionnaires for data collection. The study participants included fresh, undergraduate, and postgraduate students while the study was conducted during the 2020-2021 academic year in the first semester. Two open-ended questions were also included for data collection. The survey was designed with Google forms, consisted of Likert scale questions, and was administered via WhatsApp. The study sample also included 580 participants, who were recruited via WhatsApp groups. However, the researchers received responses from 150 participants. 

The researchers found that the sudden changes in the education sector due to Covid-19 resulted in a smooth transition in the higher education sector since institutions were prepared for the shift towards distance learning. Nevertheless, students faced challenges concerning comprehending and focusing during learning compared to in-person sessions due to factors such as family circumstances, social status, and the surrounding environment. However, online learning offered students with more opportunities for completing assignments as they waited for lectures. The geographic distance had adverse effects on communication and performance during group work. Besides, students engaged in practical work did not benefit from online learning. Nonetheless, the researchers found that remote learning saved time, as students are not required to travel, which offers students more time to study and complete assignments and projects, which enhances their academic performance. 

Alban Conto et al. (2021) investigated the extent to which Covid-19 caused school disruptions affected the acquisition of foundation skills among students to understand the effects of Covid-19 on learning. The methodology used for the study included two surveys conducted in various countries. The first survey included the MICS6 survey that contained the foundational learning skills module data that captured learning within and outside the school for grade two students. The data was acquired before the pandemic from 13 countries including Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Nepal, Mongolia, Madagascar, Lesotho, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Ghana, D.R. Congo, Chad, Central African Republic and Bangladesh. The survey measured the association between foundational learning and school attendance. The second survey included the UNESCO-World Bank-UNICEF survey data from various Ministries of Education from 122 countries during the first round and 149 countries during the second round. The second survey was conducted during the pandemic and was intended to understand the effect of remote learning models on learning. The researchers conducted regression analysis on the data to capture the learning difference of missing at least a school year. 

The findings show that students who did not access online education missed up to one school year, which affected their knowledge acquisition negatively. School closures had adverse effects on marginalized students, which affected their academic achievement significantly. 

Fazza & Mahgoub (2021) approached the effect of Covid-19 on academic achievement topic by focusing on its effect on student engagement to identify challenges to student engagement in distance learning in Qatar. The researchers used the community of inquiry model to investigate the learning settings. An exploratory qualitative methodology with a focus on the case study strategy was used. The study was conducted at Georgetown University in Qatar in which data collection occurred through an online qualitative and structured questionnaire comprising of open-ended questions. The questionnaire consisted of seven questions. Purposive sampling was used to select 244 participants even though only 64 participants received the questionnaire. The questionnaires were delivered via email addresses using Google forms and 13 participants completed the questionnaires before the researchers analyzed the data using thematic analysis. The findings show that the major challenges experienced during online learning include an uncomfortable learning environment, absence of distinct impressions of classmates, technical issues with the internet or devices, absence of conversions online, feeling uncomfortable engaging in group discussions online, absence of peer feedback and correction, and inability to understand views of other students. These challenges affected engagement during learning negatively, which may cause some students to drop out of the class. In turn, this results in poor academic performance. 

Eze et al. (2021) examine the effect of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on primary and secondary schools in Nigeria. The researchers identify the unique situation of the students and schools in Nigeria such as students not being allowed to own digital devices at school and the education system adopting purely in-person practices. Thus, the pandemic posed significant challenges to the education system. The objective of the study was to explore the views of educational stakeholders regarding the Covid-19 challenges and the effect of the challenges on learning in primary and secondary schools. The researchers used a sequential exploratory mixed methods study design including both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Data for the qualitative phase was collected using semi-structured interviews from 18 participants comprising of five education policymakers, six school head teachers, and seven principals. Thematic analysis was used to analyze interview data. The researchers also used the phase one data to inform data for the second phase before merging the results using integrated interpretation. The study sampled 5,552 participants including the 18 participants who participated in the interviews. Purposive sampling was used to select the interview participants before using the snowball sampling to select the remaining 5,534 participants of which 4,933 completed the online Covid-19 impact on education questionnaires. The participants were composed of 2,360 students, 1,798 teachers, and 1,880 parents and were spread across 36 states. The findings show that Covid-19 resulted in poor learning and unequal or poor access to learning opportunities. The pandemic also widened the achievement gap and inequality in learning. 

Melzer (2021) also investigates the impact of Covid-19 on students in America due to its disruptions of school routines among high school students. The objective of the study was to investigate the way Covid-19 is related to individual student-level factors. Specifically, the researcher identified the factors from previous studies before developing a model to predict student academic achievement of students. The differences in realized and predicted scores were then used to identify student factors that are associated with Covid-academic achievement impact (Covid-AAI). The study occurred at Midwest high school and middle school in the 2015-2016 and 2020-2021 period including grades 5-11. The participants included 400 participants, 3,623 reading tests, and 3,600 mathematics tests. The researcher measured the Covid-AAI using the Northwest Evaluation Association MAP Growth Assessments data. The researcher also collected data from student test scores during the two academic years and used the Rasch unIT (RIT) scale scores of the students of 2016-2017 to 2019-2020 to predict the anticipated score achievement of students based on past trajectories and on the assumption that the students would maintain their score trajectories into the pandemic period. The researcher then used the differences in scores predicted for individual learners and the real scores received on the tests in 2021 to compute Covid-AAI for 414 students who participated in the tests. The researcher also considered factors such as absences, socioeconomic status, ethnicity/race, gender, and grade point average when developing the model. The findings show that even though Covid-19 result in low academic performance for average students, the pandemic did not affect academic performance significantly. The researcher suggested that some high schools were resilient to the effects of Covid-19. Specifically, technologically perceptive high school students can regulate their learning and can access numerous social outlets compared to young students. Other factors that helped the students to remain resilient include earlier exposure to tutoring and after school events before the pandemic, which may have mitigated achievement losses. However, students with low socioeconomic statuses had a low academic performance. 

Ferreira (2020) conducted a descriptive study to explore student achievement, instructional hours, teacher preparation, and student attendance levels for students in grades 1-8. The researcher conducted the study at an administrative unit of a school in New Hampshire during the three terms of the 2019-2020 academic year. A sample of 1,370 students, 95 teachers were recruited for the study. Pre-covid-19 student scores and attendance levels were compared to post-Covid-19 datasets in which the researcher compared the data from the first two terms during in-person learning with the third term during distance learning. A case study design was used to understand the unique responses of students to the pandemic. The data for the study was archival and came from the New Hampshire school administrative unit for the 2019-2020 academic year in which student achievement data was obtained from the PowerSchool student information system for the 2019-2020 academic year. Data from teachers was obtained using surveys based on Google forms while student attendance data was obtained from the PowerSchool student information system and teacher surveys. The researcher computed mean and median scores of the three datasets and during the three terms. Standard deviations were also computed on the mean and median scores to identify data variability. The researcher also measured percentile ranking and Z-scores of the data. The results show that student achievement did not differ significantly for the three terms based on competency grades. Nevertheless, students attained high assessment grades during the first two terms than they did during the third term. Teachers also worked for fewer hours in the third term compared with the first two terms. The researcher also highlighted the role of equity regarding disadvantaged groups during the pandemic. In particular, the Covid-19 had a disproportionate effect on disadvantaged groups. 

The aforementioned studies illustrate that even though students had different experiences, Covid-19 affected the academic performance of many students negatively. A study by the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association used focus groups with 1,300 students to examine the effect of the pandemic on student performance (NEA & PTA, 2020). The age of the students ranged from 13 years to 18 years old and included students from urban, rural, and suburban areas in addition to students of color. The researchers adopted a qualitative study with focus group discussions before quantifying the results using online surveys with 1,328 students from public schools. The findings show that Covid-19 harmed schoolwork, which led to reduced academic progress. Specifically, while 58% of the students performed well academically before the pandemic, only 32% of them reported performing well during the pandemic. The self-reported decrease in academic performance was consistent among different groups of students regardless of the learning model such as online-only, hybrid model and in-person learning. Nevertheless, young students, students from families without a college education, and students using the hybrid model were affected disproportionately. 

In another study to examine the impact of the pandemic on learning, Ariyanti and Santoso (2020) investigated the differences in student performance in mathematics before and after the pandemic. The researchers researched two senior high schools in Madium, Indonesia. They used a quantitative research methodology with a focus on the one-group pretest-posttest design for comparing performance before and after the pandemic. They recruited 96 students using a non-random sampling technique before collecting data from the students using questionnaires and documentation. They also used a paired sample test and the population normality test based on the SPSS program. The results show that on average, students performed well in mathematics before the pandemic than they did after the pandemic. Besides, students responded positively to mathematics before the pandemic than they did after the pandemic. Reduced student performance was due to factors such as interference at home when engaging in online learning, technical problems such as weak internet signals, limited quota, and lack of explanations from teachers when giving questions. 

Summary 

Overall, the literature review demonstrates that Covid-19 had significant negative effects on academic performance. In particular, the pandemic effect on academic performance was due to factors such as inability to interact with classmates and the teacher, technical issues that interfered with learning, and disruptions from the surroundings when attending lessons. Practical subjects suffered significantly owing to their emphasis on physical presence. Besides, the negative effects of the pandemic on academic performance were particularly significant for disadvantaged students such as those with a low socioeconomic status background, and those from rural or remote locations. The review shows that the disproportionate effect on disadvantaged groups was due to their inability to access the required technological tools such as the internet and the associated devices that would enable them to attend online classes. 

Besides, younger students were affected disproportionately than did older students due to factors such as the familiarity of older students with technology. However, some students were found to be resilient to the effects of the pandemic. For these students, their resilience arises from earlier programs implemented in their schools such as community learning and after school programs. Besides, some technologically perceptive students were resilient to the adverse effects of the pandemic because of their ability to regulate their learning and access social outlets compared. There was also a noticeable gap regarding the studies, especially studies from the Middle East and Qatar. In particular, a majority of the studies in the aforementioned locations about the topic focus on the higher education sector. Thus, it is crucial to examine the effect of Covid-19 in the secondary school level in Qatar to compare the results. 

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