The rise in teenagers skipping school across English-speaking countries following the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from PISA

Abstract Many countries are grappling with the long shadow that COVID has cast over their education systems, including dramatic increases in absence from school. This paper presents new insights into this issue by investigating how the proportion of teenagers skipping school has changed following the COVID-19 pandemic across the developed world. We find that this problem is mainly confined to industrialised English-speaking nations, especially affecting teenage girls. In contrast, the proportion