During the school closure in Switzerland from March to May 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, most children stayed at home and received instructions from their teachers remotely (Huber & Helm, 2020). Children and adolescents with parents working in system-relevant professions spent their day in school-based institutions which offer extracurricular activities. In the Canton of Berne, the school principals and municipalities were responsible for organizing the so-called “emergency childcare” with the existing school-based institutions for extended education. Those children were supervised mainly by pedagogical staff, who regularly work in those institutions in lunch and afternoon care, and they adjusted the care times according to the needs of the parents. Overall, 63% of the extended education leaders reported that the staff also supported the pupils in school-related tasks. In our explorative study, we investigate to what extent the experiences of children who used those school-based institutions for extended education differ from those of children who spent this time at home with their parents. The quantitative study comprises of 245 students from 3rd to 6th grade from 13 different classrooms. The descriptive analysis shows that only 8.6% (21 pupils) attended the institutions for extended education during the school closure. In our analysis, we compare different groups according to their experiences during school closure. We analyze, which factors contribute to positive or negative experiences of all children and how those are related to certain group-specific characteristics (participation in school-based extracurricular activities or not). Subsequently, we investigate to what extent the ratings of the resilience factors of these pupils differ between and within the groups. The findings of the study are ambivalent. While some children were able to further develop for example their self-directed learning skills, others did not progress significantly. Therefore, the coping strategies are more likely related to child-specific characteristics than to the learning setting. We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic may trigger short-term changes in self-directed learning, but in the medium and long term, schools and institutions for extended education need to ensure that learning can take place in an individualized as well as an asynchronous way (Zhao & Watterson, 2021). Overall, the school closure put all children into a completely new situation. They all had to adjust to a new learning environment with a varying degree of support from different people like siblings, parents, teachers or other pedagogical staff.

Huber, S. G., & Helm, C. (2020). Lernen in Zeiten der Corona-Pandemie. In D. Fickermann & B. Edelstein (Eds.), „Langsam vermisse ich die Schule …“ (pp. 37–60). Waxmann Verlag GmbH. https://doi.org/10.31244/9783830992318.02 Neuenschwander, M., Bühler, A., Prumatt, F., & Sahli, J. (2021). Chancengleichheit im Fernunterricht während Corona-Pandemie: Einschätzungen von schulischen Akteuren. PH FHNW. Zhao, Y., & Watterston, J. (2021). The changes we need: Education post COVID-19. Journal of Educational Change, 22(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-021-09417-3