Evaluating the impact of Hazelwood mine fire event on students' educational development with Bayesian interrupted time-series hierarchical meta-regression

BackgroundDisasters and other community-wide events can introduce significant interruptions and trauma to impacted communities. Children and young people can be disproportionately affected with additional educational disruptions. With the increasing threat of climate change, establishing a timely and adaptable framework to evaluate the impact of disasters on academic achievement is needed. However, analytical challenges are posed by the availability issue of individual-level data. MethodsA new method, Bayesian hierarchical meta-regression, was developed to evaluate the impact of the 2014 Hazelwood mine fire (a six-week fire event in Australia) using only aggregated school-level data from the standardised National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test. NAPLAN results and school characteristics (2008-2018) from 69 primary/secondary schools with different levels of mine fire-related smoke exposure were used to estimate the impact of the event. Using an interrupted time-series design, the model estimated immediate effects and post-interruption trend differences with full Bayesian statistical inference. ResultsMajor academic interruptions across NAPLAN domains were evident in high exposure schools in the year post-mine fire (highest in Writing: 11.09 [95%CI: 3.16-18.93], lowest in Reading: 8.34 [95%CI: 1.07-15.51]). The interruption was comparable to a three to four-month delay in educational attainment and had not fully recovered after several years. ConclusionsConsiderable academic delays were found as a result of a mine fire, highlighting the need to provide educational and community-based supports in response to future events. Importantly, this work provides a statistical method using readily available aggregated data to assess the educational impacts in response to other disasters. Key MessagesO_LIAlthough disasters impose substantial impacts on children and young people through many factors including trauma, illness, prolonged school interruption and reduced social support, population-level impact evaluation study is rare. C_LIO_LIThis study provides an innovative method to evaluate the impact of disasters on students academic performance using only readily accessible aggregated school-level data. C_LIO_LIResults suggest that a community-wide traumatic event, where immediate risk to life and property was minimal, can still have considerable and long-term educational impacts. C_LI