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Five years ago, schools and nurseries across the UK closed to most children as the first Covid-19 lockdown began. A year of online learning, bubbles, flow tests and little social contact followed and school leaders say they are still dealing with the impact – rises in special educational needs (Sen), exclusions, absenteeism and a wider attainment gap between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds.
In a classroom in Luton, 27 children are reciting their school values. They include being kind to their friends and reflecting on their feelings, which has proven a challenge for many. These five and six-year-olds are in Year 1 at Chantry Primary Academy…
Max, 17, believes his year was the “luckiest” in the pandemic. “We were in Year 8 so we’d done our SATS, made good friends, and GCSEs didn’t start until Year 10 so this was the best year of education to miss,” he said.
Sarah, 17, moved to Comberton after the pandemic but she recalled being “12 at the time and it was so scary”. I lost the motivation to work from home and I couldn’t even get online at first – my friend had to explain how to do it, she said.
Things you didn’t understand kept piling on top of each other. It affected all the core subjects of science, English and maths. It made me really anxious, Sarah added.
These experiences are reflected in the findings of the Nuffield Foundation report. Its co-author Prof Lee Elliot-Major said: “School is a leveller, but when you take that away, people’s home lives are very different. Many lower-income families didn’t have the resources, so Covid has widened the attainment gap. It’s going to take a long time to address those divides. We also found that children’s social and emotional development has a big impact on their academic results so it’s been a double whammy and we predict that GCSEs won’t recover for a decade.” That would mean four-year-old children starting school this September may be the first children in 15 years to be unaffected by the pandemic. The Department for Education said “this government is determined to get tens of thousands more children school-ready by the age of five and break down barriers to opportunity”.
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