NFER research suggests school leaders want Government to urgently address surge in pupil Covid-related anxiety

NFER research suggests school leaders want Government to urgently address surge in pupil Covid-related anxiety

New research in schools serving predominantly deprived populations by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), suggests that schools are experiencing an increase in pupils with mental health issues, social distancing is posing a variety of challenges to classroom teaching, and that school leaders feel the Government’s approach to learning recovery is misconceived.

Today, NFER published a policy briefing, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, highlighting the results of in-depth qualitative interviews with senior school leaders to understand the continuing implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for pupils’ education in mainstream schools.

Building on NFER’s 2020 Covid-19 school surveys, it provides insights into schools’ and pupils’ needs. The interviews were conducted in May and June 2021 with 50 senior leaders from mainstream primary and secondary schools, serving predominantly deprived communities across England. We know from our previous work and other evidence that these schools and pupils have been most seriously affected by the pandemic.

This is one of two separate policy briefings focussing on the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and learning; and pupils’ wellbeing and mental health. The second briefing, based on research by ASK Research with support from NFER, focuses on special schools and is also published today.

Both briefings reveal interim findings, with the full reports planned for release in autumn 2021

Mainstream schools’ findings

The over-riding message from the senior school leaders who took part, is that they need the funding, support and autonomy to make decisions in the best interests of their pupils. They also call on the Government to provide clear guidance on future plans for assessment and accountability, and to take urgent action to free up capacity in critical health and social services for children and their families.

Key findings include:

• Though most pupils have been back in school full time since 8^th March 2021, education is hardly back to normal. Schools are supporting children to recover both academically and in terms of their wellbeing, but this is a long-term undertaking made more challenging by measures to reduce Covid-19 infection.
• Most senior leaders report that some of their pupils are suffering from Covid-related anxiety. Concerningly, a substantial minority report an increase in incidents of self-harm. Schools are putting measures in place to promote pupils’ emotional and mental health, and would like to do more. They cannot always get the support they need from specialist services, such as Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), speech and language and social services.
• School leaders say that the pupils most affected by the pandemic were already vulnerable, including those with challenging home circumstances and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). However, wellbeing and mental health issues are affecting pupils not previously identified as vulnerable too.
• Some senior leaders say that pupils’ behaviour is good or better than before, but some report an increase in incidents of poor behaviour and lack of self-control.
• Most senior leaders say that social distancing is posing a variety of challenges to the quality of teaching and learning. For example, teachers are unable to circulate round their classes to provide feedback on pupils’ work and there is little interaction between pupils.
• Many senior leaders report a reduction in enrichment activities (e.g. creative arts, sports and trips), largely due to infection control measures. They want to provide more variety and enjoyment for pupils, both within the school day and through extra-curricular activities.
• School leaders feel the Government’s current approach to learning recovery is misconceived. They see the emphasis on academic ‘catch up’ as unhelpful and want an equal focus on emotional/wellbeing recovery and enrichment alongside academic catch up. They want the Government to provide adequate funding for recovery over a period of years and to allow schools to use it flexibly.

The policy briefing makes the following recommendations on wellbeing and mental health

• The Government needs urgently to review the provision in place to address the surge in Covid-related anxiety and mental health issues among children and young people. Further research could help to quantify quite how much additional funding and support is needed across the country; however we can be clear, given existing surveys and the consensus in this study, that there is a case for action now.
• The Government should consider how best to support schools – particularly those serving deprived communities – in providing health and wellbeing services as part of a joined-up plan.
• Though the Government’s announcement of £79 million investment to help children access community mental health is welcome, there appears to be a need to increase investment in specialist mental health (CAMHS), speech and language and social care for children, young people and families, so they are not left without support.
• The Department for Education should recognise the pressures that school staff are still facing and ensure that staff wellbeing and workload are properly considered in policy development.

Recommendations on infection control measures in schools include:

• The harmful effects of social distancing and self-isolation on pupils’ education and wellbeing need to be understood and acknowledged. Schools will need time to reorganise and recover from these effects when the restrictions are lifted.
• If it is necessary to impose stricter infection controls again, on either a local or national basis, the negative consequences for wellbeing and learning need to be mitigated as far as possible.
• DfE and Ofsted need to do all in their power to enable schools to focus on all elements of the curriculum, including practical activities, and to provide a range of extra-curricular activities which enrich pupils’ learning experiences.

Recovery recommendations

• ‘Catch-up’ funding should be viewed and provided more holistically – not confined to academic needs. Senior leaders want the freedom and flexibility to deploy funds to support their pupils in the most appropriate ways within their contexts – for example schools with many anxious pupils may need to devote more resources to wellbeing support. There needs to be a long-term proactive assessment and support plan – focused on all affected cohorts as they move through the system. This should encompass curriculum, assessment and accountability; and include plans for a variety of different scenarios (e.g. in the event of further periods of school closure).

Caroline Sharp, Research Director at NFER, and Co-Author of the mainstream schools’ policy briefing said:

“Despite it being over three months since all children have returned to school full-time, our insights shows that mainstream education has not gone back to normal, due to the continuing impact of the pandemic.

“Most senior leaders we interviewed have expressed their widespread concern for their pupils’ wellbeing and mental health. They want to support their pupils, but are struggling to do so without adequate funding and being able to rely on specialist services. That is why they are calling on the Government to provide them and critical support services, with the necessary funding, and give them the independence, to enable them to best support the needs of young people.”

Josh Hillman, Director of Education at the Nuffield Foundation said:

"Whilst missed learning during the various partial school closures is of great concern, this report shows that pupils’ well-being and mental health have also been affected.

“The findings echo Nuffield-funded research from the ISER at the University of Essex which found that school closures had a significant negative impact on children’s mental health.

“Social distancing in schools has made interactions between teachers and pupils and group work much harder and enrichment beyond the core curriculum has been more limited.

“In addition to tackling the academic impact of the pandemic, additional resource and support is needed to help schools respond to the significant challenges their students are facing in terms of anxiety and other mental health issues."

Strict Embargo: 0001 Wednesday 14 July 2021

New research highlights Covid’s effect on the academic and developmental progress of pupils in special schools and colleges

New findings from ASK Research, supported by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), suggest the impact of Covid-19 has left pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) attending special schools and colleges, around four months behind in academic development and five months behind with their wider development.

Today’s policy briefing, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, highlights the results of a survey of 192 headteachers as well as in-depth interviews with 40 specialist headteachers and 40 parents and carers of children and young people who attend specialist settings. The interviews, conducted in April-June 2021, aim to understand the continuing implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on pupils in special schools and colleges in England.

This is one of two briefings released today, focussing on the pandemic’s impact on teaching and learning; and pupils’ wellbeing and mental health. The other, based on NFER research, also funded by the Nuffield Foundation, focuses on mainstream schools.

Both briefings reveal interim findings, with the full reports planned for release in autumn 2021.

Special schools and colleges key findings:

Effects on academic progress:

• Headteachers reported they thought pupils were around four months behind in their academic development. This is greater than the two and a half to three month loss of progress previously reported for pupils in mainstream settings (though the methods and timings of the studies are not identical’).

• Headteachers from special schools and colleges with the highest proportions of disadvantage reported greater effects on academic progress. Pupils in these settings were on average thought to be around seven months behind in their literacy, six and a half months behind where they should have been with their numeracy skills and eight months behind in their behaviours for learning (i.e. between three and five months further behind than their peers).

Effects on wider development

Academic development is only one aspect affected in pupils with Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs) over the course of the pandemic.

• Headteachers rated pupils at special schools and colleges as, on average, five months behind with their emotional wellbeing and mental health.
• They rated pupils as around four and a half months behind with their behaviour and self-regulation; social and communication skills; and independence, self-care and life skills.
• For pupils with health and physical conditions, headteachers reported they were on average over five months behind in their physical development.
• Pupils in settings with the highest levels of disadvantage were rated to be an additional three to four and a half months behind their peers in each of these areas (making them up to 8 and a half months behind where they were expected to be).

Reasons for lack of progress

Headteachers and parents pointed to the following four key factors which they felt contributed to the scale of losses reported.

Pupils in special schools and colleges have had reduced time in school

• Despite the Government stating that all pupils with an EHCP would get a place in their setting, one in four pupils still did not attend. This was due to a mixture of special schools not having sufficient capacity and parent choice.
• As of May 2021, data from headteachers suggests around one in ten pupils had still not fully returned.

Supporting pupils when they are not in school is difficult

Remote learning was very difficult for families of pupils with EHCPs. In common with many other parents, parents of pupils with EHCPs identified issues with IT access (headteachers reported around a third of families had limited IT access) and competing demands on their time, including working and supporting home learning of other children.

In addition, specifically for parents of a child with an EHCP:

• Engaging children with a screen, or learning from home, was challenging due to their Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
• Many parents were unable to help their children to learn or provide the specialist support they would receive in school
• Many children’s needs and behaviours worsened, due to the changes and disruptions to normality, and families had little support with this.

It is a legal requirement that these pupils receive health, therapy, and care input, but their access to this has been severely reduced

• Only around seven in ten pupils with EHCPs, attending their special school, received their full legally required support during the latest lockdown (January – March 2021).
• Around one in ten received little or no input at all.
• Only around four in ten pupils at home received the support they were entitled to from either health or care services, with around a quarter getting little or no support at all.
• Headteachers reported that in May 2021 around two in ten pupils attending special schools and colleges were still not receiving their full health and therapeutic input or their social care support.
• Around two thirds of pupils at home were not receiving the full health or care input they should be in May 2021.
• In addition, families said they were struggling to manage with reduced or no access to respite services.

Special settings are still having to restrict what they can offer pupils as they, and wider society, operate under safety restrictions

• On-site activities, including therapies and social events, were either severely limited or cancelled. Over half of headteachers (52%) reported they were having to limit their in-school activities.
• Off-site activities (e.g. swimming, travel training, work experience) are also not able to take place in most settings. Seven out of ten headteachers (70%) said they were having to restrict their usual out of school activities.
• Headteachers and parents said that these activities were integral to the lives of pupils with EHCPs, as well as a way to deliver some of the care and support needed, and that not being able to access them was impacting pupils’ development, wellbeing and behaviour.

Conclusions and recommendations

The report makes several key recommendations for Government, locally and nationally. An effective recovery for special schools and pupils should:

• Focus on more than educational attainment
• Specifically address emotional wellbeing and mental health – of pupils and staff
• Increase health and care input for pupils with EHCPs
• Extend support to families – ensuring they also recover and are able to support their children
• Be informed by experts – trusting headteachers to decide what their setting needs and how best to allocate funding
• Allow sufficient time for real recovery – not just offering a 'one off' or short-term solution
• Address pre-existing funding shortfalls in SEND, which will have been exacerbated by the changes brought about by the pandemic.

Commenting on the findings, Amy Skipp, Director of ASK Research said:

“These findings are of huge concern. The pandemic has clearly been particularly traumatic for pupils with special educational needs, their families and the staff who have worked so hard to support them. They deserve proper help now to recover.

“It shows a real lack of understanding of special needs and the work done by specialist providers to think a ‘one size fits all’ approach to recovery is going to work. Our research shows pupils with EHCPs have been the most severely affected and so The Educational Recovery Plan needs to focus on them and what they need to recover: reinstatement of the full health and care input they are legally supposed to get; help with their mental wellbeing; chances to be out in the community, mixing with their friends and having new experiences; and respite for families.

“If we do not adequately resource this vitally needed support now we could be paying a much higher price for years to come”.

Angela Donkin, NFER’s chief social scientist, said:

“This research shows special school pupils, teachers and parents have been severely impacted by the pandemic and the resultant missed learning.

“Teachers and school leaders are struggling to offer the full package of education and support which their pupils so badly need and deserve. Exhausted staff need long-term support from the Government as a matter of urgency.”

Ruth Maisey, Education Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation said:

“This research highlights that it has been particularly difficult to support pupils with special educational needs who were unable to attend their special school or college during the pandemic.

“The education recovery plan must recognise and respond to the different and ongoing challenges faced by special schools and children with special educational needs.

“Support for these pupils should focus not only on lost learning, but also on advancing their wellbeing, independence and physical health.”