PAC warns on ‘lost decade’ in education for disadvantaged children

- Prospects for a generation of children could be damaged without faster action from Government

-  One in eight schools did not take up National Tutoring Programme recovery scheme in 2021/22

- Pupil absence higher than pre-pandemic, particularly among disadvantaged pupils 

In a report today the Public Accounts Committee expresses alarm that it may take a decade for the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and others to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Years of progress since 2012 to narrow the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others had been reversed by 2022, according to Key Stage test results, and Government expects it may take another ten years to return this gap to the level at which it was before the pandemic.

A key plank of the Government’s education recovery programme, the National Tutoring Programme, was not taken up by 13% of schools in England, with pupils at these schools missing out on the benefits of subsidised tutoring. Government must do more to understand and improve these disappointing results, with the Committee further warning that schools may not be able to afford to provide tutoring once DfE reduces its subsidy rates.

The Committee calls on DfE to take targeted action to reduce absence rates among disadvantaged pupils in addition to ongoing work to improve attendance. Absence across the board is higher than before the pandemic, but also remain highest for disadvantaged pupils.

After multiple delays and much pushing, DfE’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) improvement plan has been published - but the timetable stretches beyond 2025 while the children affected continue to make their way through the school system. The Committee expects DfE to get on with the necessary improvements as quickly as possible, making clear the respective responsibilities and accountabilities of the education and health systems.

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “The DfE does not seem to appreciate the pressures schools are under as they seek to help pupils catch up amid funding constraints, challenges in recruitment and retention for staff and growing mental health needs for pupils. It is therefore essential that Government reckons with the reality of the situation and publishes focused plans on reducing the disadvantage gap and absence rates. It must also bolster uptake of tuition, an essential programme at risk of withering on the vine as subsidies are sharply reduced.

“The consequences of a lost decade in progress narrowing the gap in attainment for disadvantaged children are immeasurable. Without swift action, the slow-motion catastrophe of the pandemic for children’s education, and in particular for disadvantaged children, will continue to have far-reaching consequences for an entire generation.”

PAC report conclusions and recommendations 

It is alarming that it may take a decade for the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and others to return to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Disadvantaged pupils have, on average, lower attainment than other pupils, and results from the Key Stage 1, 2 and 4 tests taken in 2022 showed that this disadvantage gap had grown since the start of the pandemic. For example, the disadvantage gap index (a measure of the difference in attainment) at the end of primary school was 3.23 in 2022, compared with 2.90 in 2018, reversing the progress that had been made to narrow the gap since 2012. The Department says that every element of its recovery programme has been tilted towards disadvantage, it believes it has a strong package of measures in place and it hopes to see the disadvantage gap narrowing again from summer 2023. However, it still expects it may take 10 years to return the disadvantage gap to the level it was before the pandemic.

Recommendation 1: The Department should publish a plan setting out how, building on good practice, it will reduce the disadvantage gap as quickly as possible, and the expected trajectory.

Effective recovery relies on pupils being at school but absence is higher than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among disadvantaged pupils. In the autumn and spring terms of 2021/22, the average absence rate for all pupils was 7.4%, compared with 4.5% for the same terms before the pandemic in 2018/19. For disadvantaged pupils, the rate was 10.4% in 2021/22, compared with 7.2% in 2018/19. The Department says that attendance rates are improving as levels of illness reduce. It is trying to tackle pupil absence in several ways, with leadership being provided by the Attendance Action Alliance which brings together stakeholders from across the school system. The Department believes it has set strong expectations and made clear that responsibility for attendance is shared between parents, schools and local authorities. It is collecting better data, drawn directly from schools’ own systems, which it can look at in detail in real time. It also provides data back to schools to allow them to benchmark themselves against other schools.

Recommendation 2: The Department should develop a better understanding of why disadvantaged pupils have higher rates of absence than others and, in addition to its ongoing work on attendance, take targeted action to reduce absence rates among disadvantaged pupils.

We share the Department’s disappointment that 13% of schools did not take up the National Tutoring Programme in 2021/22, meaning pupils at these schools missed out on the benefits of subsidised tutoring. Take-up of the two centrally run National Tutoring Programme schemes was below the Department’s expectations, but the introduction of a school-led tutoring element gave schools more control and significantly boosted take-up. In 2021/22, 87% of schools in England participated in some form of tutoring under the National Tutoring Programme, but the Department described the fact that 13% of schools had not taken part as the “biggest disappointment” of the recovery programme. The Department says it has put a good deal of resource into persuading schools of the benefits of the National Tutoring Programme. The Department added that there was continuing evaluation of the National Tutoring Programme to ensure tutoring was delivering the best value for money, and that it had committed to investigate how it could further develop longitudinal studies.

Recommendation 3: The Department needs to do more to understand why some schools are not taking part in the National Tutoring Programme and take more effective action to increase participation, informed by evaluation of the first two years of the scheme.

We are not confident that schools will be able to afford to provide tutoring on the scale required to support all the pupils who need it once the Department withdraws its subsidy.By the end of 2021/22, pupils had started 2.5 million courses under the National Tutoring Programme. The Department made available funding of £594 million to subsidise the cost of tutoring in that period. But it is reducing its subsidy for tutoring under the National Tutoring Programme each year, with the result that the rate of subsidy will drop from 75% in 2020/21 to 25% in 2023/24. After that, schools will have to cover the full cost of tutoring from other sources, such as pupil premium funding. School budgets are already under significant pressure. Written evidence submitted to us shows that some schools are struggling to fund the cost of tutoring in 2022/23, when the Department is still providing a 60% subsidy. The Department wants tutoring to become an integral part of the school system, but it is clear that without extra funding schools will find it difficult to maintain tutoring on a comparable scale to that currently being provided. The Department has committed to model the impact of removing the subsidy on the affordability of tutoring for schools.

Recommendation 4: The Department should monitor how much tutoring is being provided, in 2022/23 and 2023/24 when it is providing a subsidy, and in subsequent years, and intervene if tutoring levels drop significantly./