The cost of school closures

How can ministers stop one of the worst legacies of the pandemic being a generation of children left behind after a year out of the classroom? This week, when Boris Johnson confirmed 8 March as the earliest schools will return, he also announced money to help pupils catch up and a long-term plan for education.

There’s a glimpse of the scale of the task facing the government as it develops a long-term plan in this report from the Education Endowment Foundation, which found not only a significant fall in attainment for primary age pupils as a result of the disruption to the school year, but also a ‘large and concerning attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged pupils’. The study, based on data collected from assessment in reading and maths taken in November 2020 by more than 5,900 year 2s in 168 primary schools, found a gap equivalent to seven months’ learning between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children.