Evaluation report
Schools as a Safety-net: The Impact of School Closures and Reopenings on Rates of Reporting of Violence Against Children
Damian Clarke, Pilar Larroulet, Daniel Pailañir, Daniela Quintana ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines how COVID-19 school closures affected the reporting of violence against children in Chile. Schools play a critical role in identifying and reporting child abuse, so when schools closed, reports of physical, psychological, and sexual violence dropped sharply. Even as schools reopened, reporting rates recovered slowly, leaving thousands of cases undetected for months or longer.
Key points
- Violence reporting declined 17-43% immediately upon school closure, varying by violence type
- Approximately 2,800 missing reports of intra-family violence, 2,000 of sexual assault, and 230 of rape were estimated during the school closure period
- Recovery of reporting rates was slow even after school reopening, with gaps persisting into late 2021, nearly two years after initial closures
- School closure and incomplete reopening accounted for 40-70% of missing reports in the post-COVID period
- Missing reports represented between 10-25 weeks of baseline reporting activity
Limitations
The study documents reported cases only and cannot capture unreported violence against children that went undetected. The analysis is limited to Chile and may not reflect patterns in other countries with different school reopening timelines, reporting infrastructure, or pandemic responses.
Abstract
Ongoing school closures and gradual reopenings have been occurring since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. One substantial cost of school closure is breakdown in channels of reporting of violence against children, in which schools play a considerable role. There is, however, little evidence documenting how widespread such a breakdown in reporting of violence against children has been, and scant evidence exists about potential recovery in reporting as schools re-open. We study all formal criminal reports of violence against children occurring in Chile up to December 2021, covering physical, psychological, and sexual violence. This is combined with administrative records of school re-opening, attendance, and epidemiological and public health measures. We observe sharp declines in violence reporting at the moment of school closure across all classes of violence studied. Estimated reporting declines range from -17% (rape), to -43% (sexual abuse). While reports rise with school re-opening, recovery of reporting rates is slow. Conservative projections suggest that reporting gaps remained into the final quarter of 2021, nearly two years after initial school closures. Our estimates suggest that school closure and incomplete re-opening resulted in around 2,800 `missing' reports of intra-family violence, 2,000 missing reports of sexual assault, and 230 missing reports of rape against children, equivalent to between 10-25 weeks of reporting in baseline periods. The immediate and longer term impacts of school closures account for between 40-70% of `missing' reports in the post-COVID period.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
Problem
School closures during COVID-19 disrupting formal reporting channels for violence against children
- Intervention
- School reopening and gradual restoration of in-person attendance
- Population
- Children in Chile experiencing or at risk of physical, psychological, and sexual violence (ages not specified)
Key finding
Reporting of rape declined by 17% upon school closure