Commenting on the National Foundation for Education Research
report into the impact of partial school closures during the
coronavirus pandemic, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the
Association of School and College Leaders, said:
“It is perhaps not surprising that the reading progress of Year 1
pupils was the most negatively impacted by Covid lockdowns.
Schools worked very hard to teach them remotely but this is
obviously particularly challenging with young pupils, and the
ability of many parents to support them will have been
constrained by having to juggle other responsibilities. It
is a worry because confidence in reading is such a vital building
block to learning.
“However, the improvement made for all year groups in reading and
maths by last summer, when children had been back in school, is
encouraging, and shows how good schools have been at addressing
learning gaps. This is even more remarkable given that the
recovery support they have had from the government has been both
confused and inadequate.
“The NFER study finds strong evidence that the gap between
disadvantaged children and their peers widened during the
pandemic. Unfortunately, this is also not surprising as
disadvantaged children often did not have access to a laptop or
tablet, and may not have had a suitable space in which to work,
as well as facing the many other challenges that come with
disadvantage.
“The underlying problem is that, even before the pandemic began,
it was estimated that it would take 500 years to close the
disadvantage gap at the current rate of progress.
“This is what we need to urgently address as a society, and this
can only really be achieved with a national strategy in which the
government works with the education sector to bring about really
significant change and improve the life chances of these young
people.”
