Closing the learning gap: uncovering causes and effective policy interventions for declining youth skills in mathematics, reading, and science

Expected outcome

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Provide policymakers with a solid understanding of the structural causes for the decline in young people’s skills levels in mathematics, reading and science, including low and top levels of achievement, observed in the EU over the past 15 years.
• Generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence about which teaching practices, programmes and policy actions can be effective to reverse that decline, including the role of curricula, structural aspects of education and training systems, physical and digital learning environments, and innovative teaching and learning methods (including their accessibility).
• Develop actionable advice to inform policy measures, programmes, future evaluations and actions for education and training systems in the field of basic skills.

Scope

Young people's mathematics, reading and science skills, as measured by large-scale international assessments such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), have significantly declined in Europe over the past 15 years. This applies both to the low and top levels of achievement. Reversing that trend is one of the fundamental objectives of the Union of Skills.

While the research literature has well analysed the short-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the structural causes of the observed decline are still poorly understood. More in-depth research is necessary, using various data sources at national and international level. Several interrelated research questions remain to be addressed, such as:

• How have changes in teaching methods, curriculum design, and assessment practices influenced the decline in mathematics, reading and science skills over time?
• What role do digital distractions and shifts in reading habits from paper to digital devices play?
• What is the role handwriting and drawing for cognitive development?
• What is the link between acquisition of cognitive skills in maths, science and reading on the one hand and the socio-emotional skills, learning skills, self-regulation, school climate on the other.
• To what extent does the increasing (also migration-related) heterogeneity of the students make it more difficult to organise learning at school?
• How does parental involvement affect educational performance?
• Do different levels of parental involvement affect educational performance?
• What is the role of cultural institutions such as museums and libraries?
• What is the combined impact of socio-economic background and gender on gaps in educational performance?
• How do different levels of investment in public education, and teacher shortages and working conditions affect the educational performance of children?

Proposals should also take into account the perspective of young people and other relevant stakeholders as part of the data collection. Close cooperation with authorities and/or other institutions owning the data is essential and should be ensured.

Understanding the causes of this decline is the pre-condition for analysing the causal impact of various remedial measures and identifying effective policies and programmes to improve young people’s skills in mathematics, reading and science. Proposals should apply experimental and/or quasi-experimental methods for their analysis and could complement them with qualitative research methods. Proposals should also evaluate the costs associated with the policy measures or programmes analysed. Interdisciplinary approaches, combining insights from economics, sociology, psychology, neurosciences and education sciences, and more generally, the social sciences and humanities (SSH), are encouraged. Clustering and cooperation among selected projects under this call topic and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged.