Lockdown’s impact on children is only beginning

Children who started school in the early days of the pandemic will have worse exam results well into the next decade. That’s according to a study released this morning by the London School of Economics, the University of Exeter and the University of Strathclyde. Researchers predict that 60 per cent of pupils will achieve worse than a grade five in their English and Maths GSCEs in 2030, considerably more than the numbers achieving poor marks today.

The study, which looked at the effect of school closures on childhood development, is the first to look at both ‘cognitive’ skills as well as ‘socio-emotional’ skills, finding the latter to be just as important. The highest 20 per cent performing pupils in cognitive tests at 14 years old but who had average socio-emotional skills failed to attain five good GSCE’s including English and Maths. 

‘Without a raft of equalising policies, the damaging legacy from COVID-19 school closures will be felt by generations of pupils’, said one of the report’s authors Professor Elliot Major.