At some point in the next few months, life will return to something approaching normality. When that happens, the UK will have to confront all the problems that Covid has left behind: bruised public finances, long NHS waiting list and the rest. But the problem that Boris Johnson is most worried about, as I write in the Times today, is the effect on children of having been out of school for so long. This pandemic has probably wiped out a decade of progress in narrowing the attainment gap.
There would undoubtedly be resistance from the education sector
The government is hoping that small group tutoring can help make up much of the lost learning; it looks like the school day will be extended as part of this. But the whole structure of education needs to be looked at to give children from deprived backgrounds the best chance of succeeding. The long summer holidays are one of the factors behind the attainment gap.
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