School closures and implications for student outcomes: evidence from Lithuania

ENThis paper studies the effect of school closure on student outcomes in the Lithuanian context. Using administrative student-level data over 2013-2017 and propensity score matching, we create a balanced sample of control and treatment groups. In contrast to other studies, we focus on students in the final years of high school, possibly eliciting the upper bar of the disruption effect. Also, we follow students after high school graduation, providing evidence on labor market outcomes. We find that the school closure effect depends on the main teaching language. If we match students on a large set of student and school characteristics but the main teaching language, school closings have a lasting negative effect on exam performance and enrolling in higher education. Matching students on the main teaching language significantly reduces the negative school closure effect, suggesting that the disruption effect is considerably smaller and also has limited outcomes after high school if we take the main teaching language into account. Keywords: School closure, education finance, student outcomes.