The COVID-19 pandemic became a big challenge for educational  systems all over the world. In the situation of prevailing uncertainty schools were caught off guard and had to adapt their educational programs to the new reality by switching to distance learning. The pandemic, quarantine regime in the majority of countries required prompt decisions from educational authorities. While skepticism and confidence in the temporary character of the pandemic was revolving among teachers, parents etc., scientific communities all over the world were carrying out numerous research to collect relevant data which could help school leaders and government authorities to plan next steps and make fast data-driven decisions. 

Majority of the studies conducted in Russia were concerned with the readiness of schools to distance learning in the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic and difficulties they faced as a consequence (NAFI, 2020; Saprykina, 2020). In this way, studies revealed the pitfalls teachers faced as a consequence of the lockdown regime and shift to distance learning such as problems with technical equipment, increase in the workload of teachers (74%) (NAFI, 2020). All the studies were analyzing opinions of different respondent groups, different subjects of the educational process and no studies were focused on measuring the impact of the pandemic on student’s learning outcomes.

As a part of the School Barometer project initiated by World Education Leadership Symposium (https://wels.edulead.net/en/), our research team carried out  studies in Russia. The project allowed us to identify what different stakeholders such as principals, teachers, students, parents and educational authorities were experiencing during the pandemic and distance learning. School barometer questionnaires allowed us to assess current social phenomenon by gathering opinions about the conditions and practices of the particular context or situation from different stakeholders at the same time.  Based on this data RWA analysis was used to analyze students' data. One of the main research questions we intended to address was “What are the most important predictors of  central student learning outcomes during COVID-19 school lockdown in Russia?”

Trautwein et al. (2006) homework practices theoretical model and theories of distance education, e-education were integrated and used as a theoretical framework of the study (Huber & Helm, 2020). In this way, questions related to students’ learning outcomes and predictors were identified in the School barometer questionnaire. Students’ learning  outcomes were presented by their achievement, learning effort and Negative Emotions and predictors were reflected in the questions of the students characteristics (age, lack of self-regulatory skills, attitude to digital learning), student time use (conducive activities, detrimental activities), home learning resource (technical equipment, parental learning support family management of crisis) and distance education (quantity and quality).

The findings in the submission are based on the data from the School Barometer survey (Huber & Helm, 2020). The School Barometer was carried out in Russia from 20.04 to 12.05.2020. The sample was formed on a voluntary basis. In this way, the respondents were reached via social networks, emails to databases of associations, professional communities, conferences, associations of educational programs alumni etc. Thus, a non-probability snowball sampling method was used to carry out the study. In this way, the survey results do not aim at generalisation to the groups (headteachers, parents etc.) all over the country. Nevertheless, the current sample has a very high response rate, which is not typical for ordinary mass surveys, which indicates the relevance of the proposed topic to the respondents. To collect student data the initial student questionnaire was translated into Russian and passed the expert validation. As a result, a total of 71,409 people from all regions of the Russian Federation took part in the survey (not all the respondents’ groups (teachers, headteachers...) took part in all the regions). The final database comprises 70219 questionnaires of various groups of respondents, including 22080 of student’s answers. We used correlation analysis and relative weight analysis to find connections between the students' outcomes (achievement, learning effort, Negative Emotions) and the key predictors (various aspects of distance learning taken from the theory model) (Huber et al. in press)

RWA analysis has shown that 71% of the Russian students' negative emotions are explained by predictors where in 33% of cases whenever students answered “for me, the most challenging part of school closure is planning my own day”, they found themselves in the situation of stress. Students' negative emotions were also explained in 12% of cases by the lack of parental learning support and in 7% of cases the stressful situation was associated with the fact that familes did not deal well with the pandemic situation. In fact, according to the data 64,1% of parents think that students need considerable support in doing his/her homework. 57,8% parents consider that their child is left behind the school program because of the lockdown situation. School barometer has revealed that Russian teachers as well as parents do not work on developing students' self-regulatory skills and responsibility but use paternalistic methods. RWA analysis has also revealed that students' negative emotions are also explained by the lack of technical equipment in families (5% out of 71% of the Russian sample). School barometer revealed that 41,1 percent of Russian parents consider that they do not have enough technical equipment for remote learning. Russian students’ learning effort is explained by reading (14% out of 33% of the sample in Russia. We suppose that this is related to the fact that Russian teachers were not ready to teach online, therefore the majority of teachers decided to give students homework according to the curriculum (Zair-Bek et al., 2020) found out that teaching practices in Russia were limited to: giving homework (36%), 18% of teachers test one of the online platforms, 7% organize educational process by themselves via Skype, Zoom. 39% - practice all the above mentioned teaching methods.

Huber, S. G., & Helm, C. (2020). COVID-19 and schooling: evaluation, assessment and accountability in times of crises—reacting quickly to explore key issues for policy, practice and research with the school barometer. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 32(2), 237-270. Kosaretsky, S., Zair-Bek, S., Kersha, Y., & Zvyagintsev, R. (2022). General education in Russia during COVID-19: Readiness, policy response, and lessons learned. In Primary and Secondary Education During Covid-19 (pp. 227-261). Springer, Cham. Zair-Bek, S., Mertsalova, T., & Anchikov, K. (2020). READINESS OF RUSSIAN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING UNDER QUARANTINE: EVALUATION OF BASIC INDICATORS. HRU HSE Facts of education, №2(27) Trautwein, U., Lüdtke, O., Schnyder, I., & Niggli, A. (2006). Predicting homework effort: support for a domain-specific, multilevel homework model. Journal of educational psychology, 98(2), 438. Digital Literacy of Russians: A 2020 Study. NAFI (2020) // https://nafi.ru/analytics/tsifrovaya-gramotnost-rossiyan-issledovanie-2020/ Saprykina, D., Volokhovich, A. Problems of Switching to Distance Education in the Russian Federation through the Eyes of Teachers. HRU HSE Facts of education, №4(29)