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International Edition

Articles on UK education

Displaying 1 - 20 of 75 articles.

Wales’s Pisa school test results have declined – but it’s not a true reflection of an education system

Alma Harris , Cardiff Metropolitan University

Archaeologists discover ancient Mayan game – here’s what it can teach modern educators

Sara Rye , University of Bradford and Carla Sousa , Lusófona University

Dyscalculia: how to support your child if they have mathematical learning difficulties

Jo Van Herwegen , UCL ; Elisabeth Herbert , UCL , and Laura Outhwaite , UCL

​England’s early years educators are underpaid and undervalued – only government investment can improve this

Nathan Archer , Leeds Beckett University

Schools in England are facing bankruptcy – here’s what the government could do to help

Chris Rolph , Nottingham Trent University

Universities call for a tuition fee rise – here’s what that would mean for students and taxpayers

Franz Buscha , University of Westminster and Matt Dickson , University of Bath

A-levels : A grades are up compared to pre-pandemic results

Helena Gillespie , University of East Anglia

The public cost of private schools: rising fees and luxury facilities raise questions about charitable status

Malcolm James , Cardiff Metropolitan University ; Jane Kenway , Monash University , and Rebecca Boden , Tampere University

How a new GCSE in natural history can help us towards a greener future

Mark Fellowes , University of Reading and Jo Anna Reed Johnson , University of Reading

Would a longer school day help children catch up after the pandemic? Here’s what the evidence says

Lisa E. Kim , University of York and Kathryn Asbury , University of York

Disabled children still face exclusion in PE – here’s what needs to change

Tom Gibbons , Teesside University and Kevin Dixon , Northumbria University, Newcastle

Boris Johnson wants to pay Stem teachers a £3,000 premium – research shows incentives don’t work

Beng Huat See , Durham University and Stephen Gorard , Durham University

Major teaching reform in England will erode the intellectual basis of the profession

Matthew Clarke , York St John University and Keither Parker , York St John University

GCSE and A-level results have seen record grade inflation – here’s why that doesn’t matter

How academy school groups defied their business-focused reputation to help students in lockdown

Christopher Day , University of Nottingham

How to make teaching more women-friendly , post-COVID

Katy Marsh-Davies , Sheffield Hallam University and Suzanne Brown , Sheffield Hallam University

Why early-years education must be prioritised in pandemic recovery plans

Xanthe Whittaker , University of Leeds ; Jennifer Tomlinson , University of Leeds , and Kate Hardy , University of Leeds

COVID school recovery: is England’s £1.4 billion catch-up plan a good idea?

Stephen Gorard , Durham University

Smartphones are powerful personal pocket computers – should schools ban them?

Victoria Goodyear , University of Birmingham ; Kathleen Armour , University of Birmingham , and Miranda Pallan , University of Birmingham

What the government’s report on race gets wrong about the education system

Leon Tikly , University of Bristol

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Professor of Education Research, School of Education, Durham University

Lecturer in Economics and Social Statistics, UCL

Emeritus Professor, Monash University. Professorial Fellow, Melbourne University, Monash University

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• Education, training and skills
• Inspections and performance of education providers
• Inspection and performance of schools

Education recovery in schools: autumn 2021

Published 16 December 2021

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2021

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] .

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-recovery-in-schools-autumn-2021/education-recovery-in-schools-autumn-2021

The picture overall

The impact of the pandemic on children and schools is well documented. This time last year, we published a series of COVID-19-themed briefings , presenting findings from interim visits to schools in the autumn term 2020. Leaders faced challenges in managing the logistics of COVID-19 safety measures, delivering education remotely and identifying gaps in learning. Many school leaders and staff responded to these challenges with tenacity and demonstrated creativity in how they supported pupils.

Since then, schools faced another period of physical closure to most children from January 2021, and have continued to deal with the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on pupils and staff since reopening. Our inspection handbooks have been amended to consider the impact of the pandemic on schools. We have looked at the evidence collected from a sample of 98 routine inspections carried out this term. It is clear from our findings that the effects of the pandemic are still being felt by pupils, staff and leaders.

School leaders described the continued impact of the pandemic on pupils’ education and personal development. Leaders said that the newest cohorts in primary and secondary schools have arrived with lower starting points than previous years. Schools have also found that some pupils are taking longer than usual to settle in and get used to the school routine, which they attribute to the pandemic disrupting the previous academic year and pupils’ transition arrangements. The pandemic continues to affect pupils’ attendance and leaders also reported an increase in pupils with poor mental health and well-being.

Some pupils in primary schools have gaps in phonics knowledge, and in both primary and secondary schools, some pupils are catching up on practical skills, such as in the sciences and in physical education (PE). These ‘gaps’ in knowledge are either because schools had not taught this content while they were partially closed or because pupils did not learn effectively during this period.

Many schools were responding to these challenges by using regular, informal assessments to determine what knowledge pupils have (and have not) remembered from their teaching during lockdown. Most teachers were using this to inform their curriculum planning. Many schools also said that they were using assessment to identify pupils who may benefit from additional support, such as one-to-one intervention, to catch up. Leaders often spoke about this as a dynamic, ongoing process of assessing, adapting teaching and supporting specific pupils where needed.

Understanding what pupils do and do not know and using this information to make necessary adjustments to the curriculum is an important part of education recovery. However, effective approaches to assessment and catch-up will be different in different subject areas. [footnote 1] In terms of adaptations, most teachers were providing lots of opportunities for pupils to revisit and consolidate previous learning and were focusing on areas of the curriculum that have been missed and need to be covered. One-to-one or group interventions were often led by school staff and targeted specific pupils, such as those with special educational needs and/or disabilities ( SEND ). Some schools had set up additional catch-up provision before or after school.

The pandemic continues to affect school staff and leaders. This includes COVID-related staff absence, staff training being postponed, and school improvement plans being slowed down.

It is still too early to see the full impact of different approaches to education recovery on pupils’ learning and personal development, but it is clear that schools are responding with resilience and perseverance to support all pupils. We have seen that leaders are working hard despite the challenges that schools continue to face.

Methodological note

This briefing uses evidence gathered from routine inspections to show:

• how the pandemic continues to impact on pupils’ learning and personal development
• how schools are helping pupils to catch up

Our inspections give us insight into schools’ approaches to recovery. The findings in this briefing are based on evidence collected during routine inspections of 98 primary and secondary schools in England between 25 October and 19 November 2021. This is nearly a quarter (22%) of school inspections carried out during that time. However, it is just a selection so the findings illustrate the challenges that some schools are facing and the approaches they are taking. In future briefings, we will include findings for special schools and alternative provision; we didn’t have a big enough sample of inspections of these schools during the time period for this report.

The current state of children’s education

Ongoing covid-related absence.

Many schools are still working on getting back to pre-pandemic attendance levels. Schools report that much absence is directly related to COVID-19. Schools described a range of direct and indirect reasons for COVID-19-related absences, including:

• pupils testing positive for COVID-19
• COVID-19-related anxiety among both parents and pupils
• poorer mental health among pupils
• rescheduled or rearranged term-time holidays
• low resilience to setbacks or illness

Some schools had more COVID-19-related absences among disadvantaged pupils (often those for whom they received pupil premium funding), pupils with SEND and specific year groups (for example, Year 8, Year 11 and sixth form). Leaders are tackling this through family support, designated staff members, follow-up phone calls or home visits, and clubs for those whose attendance is particularly low.

The latest annual report from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services suggests an increase in children being electively home educated as a result of the pandemic. [footnote 2] A few school leaders said that, since they have fully reopened, some pupils who had moved to elective home education have now returned to school full-time.

The newest intake of pupils

Children coming into the Reception Year have missed out on or had interrupted nursery provision. This has resulted in the newest intake of pupils struggling more with peer interactions, behaviour, school readiness and attitudes to learning. Some teachers said that the impact of the pandemic on Reception pupils was bigger than they had expected. Schools had found that pupils had a wider range of starting points. As discussed in our briefing on early years , the pandemic has hindered opportunities for children’s language and communication development. Similarly, schools said that some Year 1 and Year 2 pupils were displaying poorer behaviours, including having difficulties socialising with peers. They also had gaps in phonics knowledge.

In secondary schools, Year 7 pupils struggled with the behaviour expectations of their new school and took longer to settle in. Schools suggested that this was because to the transition process between primary and secondary school was unusual. Some schools described Year 8 in a similar way, which may reflect that their first year of secondary school was also greatly affected by the pandemic.

Overall, schools said that Year 7 pupils had a wider range of starting points and greater knowledge gaps in specific subjects compared with previous cohorts. The subjects and skills that were commonly mentioned include: reading, mathematics, writing stamina, science (particularly in practical skills) and languages.

Schools said that disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND have been particularly affected by the pandemic. They had concerns about the social and emotional health of pupils with SEND . One school described its pupils with SEND as ‘not secondary ready’. Leaders in some schools mentioned that the pandemic has exacerbated the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. A few schools said that lockdown had worsened behaviour among these pupils, including more persistent absences and exclusions and lower engagement with learning.

Knowledge and skills in specific areas

Schools identified a wide range of subject-specific areas that continued to be affected by the pandemic, either because teaching had been missed or because pupils did not learn well remotely. How much pupils had learned, and how secure they were in this knowledge, depended on whether they were in school during lockdowns, how much they had engaged with remote learning and how independently they could work at home. Primary school pupils’ learning was often dependent on the level of support parents were able to give and the confidence parents had in helping their children in different subjects.

Gaps in literacy and language were frequently noted across both primary and secondary schools. Specific areas of learning loss include: writing stamina, spelling, vocabulary, punctuation, handwriting, and – in particular – phonics knowledge. One school noted that the latter had negatively affected pupils’ ability to properly access other subjects, which all require reading.

School leaders said that most pupils had some gaps in mathematics knowledge that they had identified and were addressing this term. In primary schools, teachers identified common gaps in key stage 1 pupils’ knowledge of place value, number and symbol recognition, and number bonds.

As we identified in last year’s COVID-19-themed briefings , schools found it challenging to teach practical skills remotely. Some pupils are still catching up on missed teaching of practical skills in subjects such as geography, science, music, technologies and art. In the early years, schools had noticed delays in children’s fine motor skills. Many schools also identified that pupils had missed out on PE and general physical activity. Leaders said that some pupils have returned to school unfit, more overweight and lacking physical resilience and stamina.

A smaller number of school leaders said that the pandemic continued to affect the teaching of history and languages during the autumn term. This is due to these subjects having more to catch up on as some content was not taught while schools were closed or was difficult to teach remotely. In history, this has resulted in gaps in pupils’ knowledge of chronology and their ability to use sources, as well as pupils missing out on history school trips. In languages, pupils have found speaking and listening tasks more challenging.

Many secondary school leaders said that key stage 4 pupils had missed out on careers education and work experience opportunities. Schools are trying to catch up on this. However, in some schools, careers education and work experience opportunities have not yet restarted, remain virtual or are reduced compared with before the pandemic.

Catch-up strategies

Identifying gaps in learning.

School leaders mentioned 2 issues emerging from the time when schools were partially closed: they had not been able to teach some of their usual curriculum, and some of what was taught was not well remembered by pupils. These issues had led to gaps in pupils’ learning.

Many leaders said they had reviewed the previous year’s curriculum plans to establish the breadth and depth of what they had been able to cover and what had been missed. They did this so that teachers could ‘plug the gaps’ in coverage where necessary.

In addition, curriculum leaders in some schools said they had used assessment information at the beginning of the academic year (or at the end of the summer term) to understand:

• which knowledge pupils had not learned well
• which concepts pupils were finding difficult
• which knowledge pupils could not remember

Teachers were using this assessment to pinpoint areas of their curriculum that were a priority for catch-up and to identify what knowledge pupils needed to be taught or to recap before they could progress with new learning. Leaders said they were also using both formative and summative assessments (in formal and informal ways) to identify individual pupils who may need additional support.

Informal assessment included low-stakes testing and teacher questioning to understand gaps in pupils’ learning. Teachers were then amending lessons ‘as we go’ and continually planning additional support for specific pupils. For example, some primary schools described how their frequent assessments in phonics lessons were leading to: additional afternoon catch-up sessions for small groups; ‘pre-teaching’ before the next scheduled lesson; or recapping lessons for the whole class. Leaders said this approach to assessment enabled teachers to respond quickly when they identified new gaps in learning or when they needed to adapt to ongoing absences due to COVID-19.

Some schools referred to more formal assessment methods to measure attainment, such as standardised testing at the start of the autumn term in reading or mathematics, baseline testing of new Year 7 cohorts and mock examinations for Year 11 pupils. These broad measures of performance usually cover a wide range of content, which can be less helpful than focused assessment when trying to identify specific gaps in knowledge. [footnote 3] Most schools mentioned informal targeted assessment rather than formal assessment approaches.

Intervention classes, such as one-to-one sessions or group work, were also a very common approach used to help specific pupils to catch up. In primary schools, interventions seemed to focus on the core subjects of mathematics and English, and especially phonics and reading skills.

Inspectors noted that some schools were using frequent assessments to ensure that gaps were identified and further support provided. However, in a few schools, inspectors found that assessment needed to be more robust. For example, at times it did not focus on gaps in learning or was not being used effectively to ensure that pupils were catching up.

Curriculum adaptations

School leaders wanted to ‘pick up the pieces from the pandemic’ and were pleased to be getting back to their normal curriculum. A small number of school leaders said that they were not making any adaptations to their usual curriculum because they were confident in the remote learning they had provided and in their catch-up work after fully reopening. However, many schools were adapting their curriculum plans to address gaps in learning. Some leaders referred to this as their ‘recovery curriculum’.

As previously mentioned, many leaders had been reviewing the curriculum to identify what had been taught and what had been missed. This enabled staff to adjust the curriculum and prioritise missed learning. As one primary school leader put it, this ensured that staff were not ‘building on sand’ when teaching new content.

Leaders also talked about providing opportunities across the curriculum for a lot of repetition, retrieval and revision of previous learning. This was to help pupils consolidate their knowledge. Some schools were specifically revisiting topics that had been taught remotely either because some pupils had not engaged well or because some topics had been challenging to teach in this way.

In many primary schools, leaders were focusing on the core subjects for their catch-up work, particularly phonics, reading and mathematics. Many phonics leaders talked about their regular recaps and ‘backtracking’. Approaches included:

• increasing the number of sessions for all key stage 1 pupils
• re-teaching last year’s content to cover gaps
• continuing phonics in lower key stage 2 classes to cover content that had not been learned well

A few schools had purchased new programmes and resources to support their catch-up work in phonics or had provided additional staff training in this area. A few others had employed extra staff to focus on supporting phonics teaching. As previously mentioned, most phonics leaders talked about providing additional, sometimes daily, interventions to support catch-up for targeted pupils. Many primary schools were also focusing on reading in other ways, for example:

• providing additional opportunities for specific pupils to read to an adult
• working to ‘reignite reading’ with new books or reading areas
• sending recommended reading lists home
• having ‘drop everything and read’ sessions

Most primary schools were also focusing on catch-up work in mathematics, including:

• recapping and regular retrieval of prior learning (for example, through regular 10-minute sessions)
• focusing on problem-solving and reasoning tasks that they had not been able to explore through remote teaching
• breaking down topics into smaller steps and taking more time to cover content
• using more manipulatives to support initial understanding of concepts

Curriculum adaptations in other subjects included: prioritising practical work in science; re-sequencing topics in subjects such as history, geography and personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education; and altering swimming schedules. On occasion, inspectors noted that leaders should remain mindful of their curriculum goals to ensure that these were not lost when making adaptations.

Many secondary school leaders were using targeted interventions for catch-up and mentioned the importance of regularly reviewing and repeating prior learning in all subjects.

In English, many secondary schools were focusing on pupils’ catch-up in reading. For example, some were targeting key stage 3 pupils who had been identified as needing additional phonics work. Others had introduced new reading programmes for whole cohorts, such as Year 7. English curriculum leaders also talked about adaptations made to support pupils’ writing skills. Some were providing more extended writing opportunities and others were focusing on grammar and punctuation, for example through explicit attention in lesson starters.

In mathematics, secondary school leaders appeared to be strongly focusing on regularly reviewing and recapping prior learning. In particular, they revisited areas where gaps in pupils’ learning had been identified or topics that had been taught remotely, in order to consolidate knowledge. A few leaders mentioned focusing on certain areas during this term, such as core number skills (with Year 7), algebra or place value.

Secondary school leaders also said that they had made adaptations in other curriculum areas to respond to pupils’ gaps in learning. For example:

• in science, many curriculum leaders were prioritising enquiry and practical work to catch up on the opportunities missed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Some leaders were having to focus on Year 7 pupils in particular, due to varying key stage 2 experiences
• in languages, some schools were concentrating on speaking tasks because of the limited opportunities for spoken-language communication in remote learning. Leaders were using a lot of repetition and drills. Some were also focusing on aspects of grammar, such as tenses
• in PE, a few schools were revisiting skills or teaching missed units. For example, one school was spending more time on ‘game situations’ as this had been difficult to cover remotely

Many school leaders talked about their enrichment programme and extra-curricular activities. In some schools, these were still suspended or were just restarting, but other schools had fully restored their programme.

Use of tutors

In some primary and secondary schools, leaders said they were using funding to provide one-to-one or group interventions. Many schools used their own staff, including teaching assistants, for these. A few said they were using academic mentors or National Tutoring Programme tutors. Some school leaders talked about their plans to begin a tutoring programme in the near future.

Many schools’ tutoring and intervention work targeted specific pupils. Schools varied in how they were targeting this support. For example, some schools were targeting disadvantaged pupils; others mentioned examination cohorts and specific year groups. Some leaders said they were using their assessment tools to identify individual pupils who had gaps in learning or were not catching up quickly and would benefit from targeted support. The intervention activity often focused on the core subjects of mathematics, English (usually phonics and reading) and science.

Extending school time

Some school leaders mentioned that they were offering after-school provision, such as intervention groups, ‘catch-up clubs’ or revision sessions. The extended provision usually focused on core subjects. Once again, these interventions were often for specific pupils identified as needing extra support.

A few schools were using time before school for extra support. For example, some offered targeted one-to-one English tuition; some held reading comprehension booster sessions with large groups of pupils; and some were starting the day early with 10 minutes of whole-class fluency work in mathematics. A small number of schools were offering Saturday sessions and a few secondary schools used summer school programmes as part of inducting new Year 7 cohorts.

Some secondary school leaders had extended the school day for all pupils. The additional time allowed for enrichment activities, pastoral sessions and support with homework, as well as catch-up work or tutoring.

Pupils with SEND

Some schools were prioritising their assessment of pupils with SEND . Our research on the experiences of children with SEND at the height of the pandemic showed that access to some external services and local authority support was affected during the pandemic.

Primary school leaders talked about their catch-up strategies for pupils with SEND . These included more personalised one-to-one support, extra pre-teaching activities or interventions in areas such as reading, writing or specific aspects of mathematics. Many secondary school leaders were also using additional group interventions or one-to-one support from teaching assistants. This often focused on the core subjects but some schools also offered pastoral, social and emotional support for pupils with SEND who were finding the return to school difficult. A few leaders said additional training had been put in place to help staff support pupils with SEND .

Pupils’ personal development

Mental health and well-being.

Many schools said that the pandemic continued to impact negatively on the mental health and well-being of some of their pupils. Primary schools were more likely to say that some pupils were not as resilient as they were before lockdown, while secondary schools tended to report increased numbers of pupils suffering from anxiety and self-harming.

Some of this is the direct impact of the pandemic on pupils, for example pupils being anxious about catching COVID-19 and others being affected by the deaths of people close to them. However, the pandemic is also likely to have had an indirect impact on pupils because time out of school has hindered the identification and support of children with mental health needs.

Schools were continuing to support pupils with mental health and well-being. Many were embedding well-being into their curriculum or increasing individualised support available to pupils. A few schools increased staff training, for example in mental health first aid. Some leaders had also expanded pastoral support and employed additional staff, including counsellors. A couple of schools explained that a small number of pupils needed ongoing support or a phased timetable to support their return to school full-time.

Schools work with external agencies to support pupils with mental health needs. In some schools, leaders said they were making more referrals to external agencies compared with before the pandemic. A few leaders mentioned long waiting times for services in their area. This was the reason that one school decided to employ its own support staff.

Behaviour and expectations

Staff at a few schools said that pupils’ behaviour had improved compared with before the pandemic. Pupils were happy to be back in school and showing a positive attitude to learning. However, some school leaders said that pupils’ behaviour continued to be a challenge in the autumn term as pupils settled in and became familiar with the school routine.

Schools reported children struggling with social skills, such as how they related to and collaborated with other pupils. A few schools said that the current Year 7 cohort felt a lot younger than they normally do, including displaying more immature behaviour.

A small number of secondary schools mentioned a rise in exclusions since fully reopening. The reasons for exclusions often centred around pupils fighting with or bullying other pupils. However, the most challenging behaviour tended to be among a small minority of pupils who had challenging behaviour before the pandemic. Staff in one school described how the pandemic had ‘undone’ a lot of the school’s good work on behaviour.

In response, schools were focusing on re-establishing boundaries and routines, and communicating their expectations of pupils. Due to COVID-19 restrictions affecting the usual transition into Reception, one school had created a video of the school environment so that the newest intake of children knew what to expect when they started school. A few leaders said staff had been on additional training courses due to the increased behavioural challenges they had faced.

School leadership

School improvement plans.

A few school leaders said that the pandemic had not caused any delays or disruption to their school improvement plans and that they had been able to continue with curriculum development. In a few schools, the partial school closures had given staff an opportunity to reflect and time to develop their curriculum.

However, other school leaders said the pandemic has had a negative impact on their development plans. Due to competing demands, putting plans into action had been slowed or delayed. Some areas that leaders said were affected include:

• curriculum development
• introducing new assessment and monitoring systems
• changing staff structures
• anti-bullying work
• lesson observations (these had been prevented because of ‘class bubbles’ introduced as part of COVID-19 restrictions)

Schools were also affected by COVID-19-related staff absence. In a few cases, leaders said that they had experienced multiple members of staff off work at the same time during the autumn term. Although having several absent staff members creates a challenge for all leaders, we recognise that, in smaller schools, even one member of staff absent with COVID-19 can be difficult to overcome.

In many schools, staff said they felt supported by their colleagues and senior leaders. Some believed that the difficulties of the last year had brought staff teams closer together. A few teachers said that their workload had increased as a result of the pandemic, but that senior leaders were supporting them, for example by reducing the number of meetings and allocating time for planning. Staff well-being, like pupils’ well-being, continued to be a priority.

There was a mixed picture about how the pandemic was affecting staff training this term. A few schools had found training more accessible due to online opportunities, but more said they were behind on training because it had been cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic. The negative impact of the pandemic on early career teachers was reported across several schools. Early career teachers had missed opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills during lockdowns.

‘Teaching a broad and balanced curriculum for education recovery’ , Department for Education, July 2021.  ↩

‘Elective home education survey report 2021’ , Association of Directors of Children’s Services, November 2021.  ↩

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Home / Publications & Research / Social Mobility & Vulnerable Learners / Education in England: Annual Report 2020

Education in England: Annual Report 2020

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has published its Annual Report on the state of education in England, including the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. 

Education in England: Annual Report 2020 , which is published in partnership with the Fair Education Alliance (FEA) and Unbound Philanthropy, also examines the gap at a local level, across different school subjects, and among different groups of pupils – including by varying levels of disadvantage.

The new report finds that:

• The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has stopped closing for the first time in a decade. Policymakers have not succeeded in responding to earlier reports warning of a major loss of momentum in closing the gap.
• Disadvantaged pupils in England are 18.1 months of learning behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs – the same gap as five years ago.
• The gap at primary school increased for the first time since 2007 – which may signal that the gap is set to widen in the future.
• The stalling of the gap occurred even before the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the education system.
• Researchers have identified the increasing proportion of disadvantaged children in persistent poverty as a contributory cause of the lack of progress with narrowing the disadvantage gap.

You can download the full report here .

Key findings

The education disadvantage gap: the latest trends.

The disadvantage gap in England has stopped closing, and there are now several strong indications that it has started to widen:

• At secondary school , by the time they take their GCSEs, disadvantaged pupils (those who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years) are over 18.1 months of learning behind their peers. This gap is the same as it was five years ago.
• At primary school , the gap between poorer pupils and their peers is 9.3 months, having increased for the first time since at least 2007. This could be a turning point, in which the disadvantage gap now continues to widen at this phase.
• In the early years (pupils in Reception year), the gap has stagnated at 4.6 months , having largely stayed the same since 2013.
• When will the gap close? Last year EPI modelled that it would take over 500 years to eliminate the disadvantage gap at GCSE, based on the rate of progress. This year’s data suggests an even more extreme conclusion: the gap is no longer closing at all.

How do different levels of poverty affect the disadvantage gap?

This year for the very first time, EPI researchers have analysed the gap for pupils across different levels of disadvantage:

• Children with a high persistence of poverty (those on free school meals for over 80% of their time at school) have a learning gap of 22.7 months ‒ twice that of children with a low persistence of poverty (those on free schools meals for less than 20% of their time at school), who have a learning gap 11.3 months .
• Progress in closing the gap has been slowest for pupils with a high persistence of poverty, with the gap remaining much the same after almost a decade. Disadvantaged pupils with lower persistence of poverty have also experienced worsening gaps, although to a lesser degree.
• Significantly, the proportion of pupils with a high persistence of poverty is on the rise . Since 2017, the proportion of pupils in this group has risen from 34.8% to 36.7%. This recent increase appears to be an important contributor to the lack of progress with the gap overall.

How does the disadvantage gap vary in different areas in England?

Across the country, there is wide variation in the disadvantage gap:

• Large disadvantage gaps remain well-established in several regions in England but are particularly acute in the North, West Midlands and parts of the South.
• In some areas, poorer pupils are over two full years of education behind their peers by the time they take their GCSEs, including in Blackpool (26.3 months), Knowsley (24.7 months) and Plymouth (24.5 months).
• In contrast, there are very low GCSE disadvantage gaps concentrated in London , including in Ealing (4.6 months), Redbridge (2.7 months) and Westminster (0.5 months).

This year, for the first time, EPI researchers have also calculated the disadvantage gap at a local level after having controlled for high persistence of poverty in each area.

This reveals that differences in local demographics are essential to understanding why gaps are different in different parts of the country. Under this adjusted measure, many areas that currently rank as some of the worst in the country substantially improve their position once high persistent poverty levels are considered:

• Out of 150 local authorities in England, Knowsley is ranked as having the second-worst education disadvantage gap in the whole country. However, it improves its ranking by 28 places after having adjusted for persistent poverty levels.
• Other areas also see big changes in their rankings under this poverty-adjusted measure: Sunderland moves from having the 12th largest gap to 55th, Liverpool from 23rd largest to 83rd, Hartlepool from 25th largest to 65th.
• Each of these areas have large disadvantage gaps, but a major reason for this may be the large proportion of poor children who are in persistent poverty.

Equally, the poverty-adjusted measure also highlights areas which should be performing better, given their favourable local demographics:

• Surrey makes the biggest fall down the rankings after having adjusted for poverty levels, by 30 places (84th to 54th worst gap).
• Other local authorities who lose out significantly in the rankings after applying this measure include Wiltshire (53rd to 26th worst gap), Leicestershire (71st to 43rd worst gap) and Buckinghamshire (104th to 78th worst gap).

Areas with the largest education disadvantage gaps, adjusting for persistent poverty:

Controlling for persistent poverty levels, out of 150 local authorities, areas with the largest gaps in the country are now South Gloucestershire (worst disadvantage gap), West Berkshire (second worst gap) and Blackpool (third worst gap). (A full breakdown of all local disadvantage gaps, including by parliamentary constituency and other levels, can be found here).

How does educational attainment vary by pupil ethnicity?

Attainment varies significantly among pupil ethnic groups:

• Gypsy/Roma pupils are almost three years (34 months) behind White British pupils at GCSE level. In contrast, Chinese pupils are two whole years (23.9 months) ahead of White British pupils in learning at this stage of their education.
• Some ethnic groups have experienced growing inequalities over recent years. Black Caribbean pupils were 6.5 months behind White British pupils in 2011, but this gap has now regressed to 10.9 months, meaning that the gap has widened for Black Caribbean pupils by well over four months in the last eight years.
• Gaps have also widened for pupils from other black backgrounds, and for pupils with English as an additional language who arrived late to the school system.
• EPI researchers plan to carry out further work to better understand the factors behind these significant ethnicity gaps and the changes in the gaps over time. While it is likely that poverty is contributing to some of these trends, there is also a need to understand the extent to which other societal and educational factors are creating and worsening inequalities amongst these groups of pupils.

How does the disadvantage gap vary among more vulnerable pupil groups?

For the very first time, EPI researchers have measured the trend in the disadvantage gap for children in the care system (known as ‘looked after children’) and children who are receiving support from children’s services (known as ‘children in need’). These pupils are significantly educationally disadvantaged:

• Looked after children (LAC) are nearly two and a half years (29.0 months) behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs. Progress in closing this gap is slow; it has reduced by only 1 month (3.3%) over the last six years.
• Children in need (CIN) are 20 months behind their peers, while children in need with a Child Protection Plan (typically those who have experienced neglect, or physical, sexual or emotional abuse) are over two years (26 months) behind their peers.
• It is notable that around a quarter of children with a Child Protection Plan do not receive either the Pupil Premium or Looked After Premium from the government. The large gaps among these groups support recent EPI proposals to extend the Looked After Premium to children with Child Protection plans.

Progress in reducing gaps for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) has begun to slow since 2015, particularly for pupils with greater needs:

• Pupils with SEND who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (typically those with greater needs) are well over three years (41.1 months) behind their peers at the end of secondary school, while those with SEND without an EHCP are two full years (24.4 months) behind their peers.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Additional  documents and resources

Geographical analysis pack : disadvantage gap breakdowns including by local authority and parliamentary constituency.

Disadvantage gap data : an interactive version of the geographical breakdowns, with downloadable data tables.

Infographic : A visualisation of the key findings from the report

This report is published in partnership with the Fair Education Alliance (FEA) and Unbound Philanthropy

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Mary Reader

Avinash Akhal

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• Covid-19 in the UK:...

Covid-19 in the UK: policy on children and schools

Read our covid inquiry series.

• Related content
• Peer review
• Deepti Gurdasani , senior lecturer in machine learning 1 2 ,
• Christina Pagel , professor of operational research 3 ,
• Martin McKee , professor of European public health 4 ,
• Susan Michie , professor of health psychology 3 ,
• Trish Greenhalgh , professor of primary care health science 5 ,
• Christopher Yates , senior lecturer in mathematical biology 6 ,
• Gabriel Scally , visiting professor of public health 7 ,
• Hisham Ziauddeen , senior research associate 8
• 1 Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
• 2 Alan Turing Institute, London, UK
• 3 University College London, London, UK
• 4 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
• 5 University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
• 6 University of Bath, Bath, UK
• 7 University of Bristol, UK
• 8 University of Cambridge, UK
• Correspondence to: D Gurdasani d.gurdasani{at}qmul.ac.uk

Deepti Gurdasani and colleagues argue UK covid policy did not give children sufficient priority and question the evidence behind government decisions

Key messages

Pandemic policy on children and schools reflected UK based scientific narratives that did not align with global scientific consensus

Government relied on evidence that downplayed the seriousness of covid-19 in children, underestimated the benefits of precautionary measures, and overestimated the harms of vaccination

Return to school in September 2020 with minimal emphasis on masking and air quality, and inadequate support for isolation may have accelerated community transmission

The public inquiry should explore why the UK was an international outlier in its approach to protecting children and making schools and communities safer

Children in the United Kingdom have been severely affected by the covid-19 pandemic. The closure of schools deprived them of access not only to education but to the many other things that schools provide, from emotional support and life skills to, for some, regular meals. Some schools, especially those attended by children from more affluent families, were able to partially compensate by moving lessons online, but many could not, not least because many of their pupils were in families that were digitally excluded. Children from disadvantaged families were also disproportionately affected by bereavement as many had breadwinners in jobs that placed them at high risk of infection.

As the pandemic progressed, the needs of children continued to be overlooked. Schools reopened without measures to protect them and their families, in particular monitoring of indoor air quality and effective ventilation. When vaccines became available, there were long delays before recommending them for children and the messaging was confused. But worst of all, children in the UK were weaponised, exploited in an ideological battle by those who viewed any restriction on individual liberty as an unacceptable attack on their freedom. We examine the evidence behind government decisions and suggest what the public inquiry needs to consider so that we can learn for the future.

Unsafe reopening

The enormous educational and social benefits to children from attending school, particularly those vulnerable at home, 1 and the initial belief that covid-19 was a mild and inconsequential disease in children led the UK governments to reopen schools as soon as possible after the initial closures. However, reopening was not accompanied by a comprehensive package of measures to protect children returning to school. Schools relied on measures such as staggered start times, hand and surface hygiene, and class or year group bubbles. Masks were advised only for secondary schoolchildren, and mostly not in classrooms.

Government policy seems to have been based on three assumptions—namely, that children had a minimal role in community spread, particularly to vulnerable relatives; that schools were not loci of transmission; and that children were not harmed by infection. However, none of these assumptions is true, and this was knowable early on, when key decisions were made ( table 1 ). Indeed, policies on children and schools (especially in England but to a lesser extent in devolved nations) diverged in many ways from those implemented by other governments (including many in western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East) and were contrary to advice from the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 63 64 65

Links between evidence and UK policy on children and schools

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UK was international outlier

The UK response at each step was out of line with that in many other countries. Portugal and Austria required masks for all children aged 6 years and above in school as early as May 2020, 2 and Italy, Greece, Spain, Austria, France, and several states in Germany by required masks in primary and secondary schools by October. However, when school restarted in September 2020 in the UK, secondary school children were required to wear masks only in communal areas.

Germany invested substantially in ventilation in public buildings, including schools, during this period. 3 Denmark and Greece reduced class sizes. Israel, Spain, Denmark, and Italy increased physical distancing within classrooms. Several regions in Spain hired more teaching staff to maintain smaller bubbles and began using facilities like canteens and libraries to allow physical distancing. Masks in schools were maintained across Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria, and several states in Germany for the entire school year until autumn 2021, when measures were briefly eased before being reinstituted during the delta wave.

The UK’s approach reflects wider policy differences. Class sizes in England are among the highest in western Europe, 4 and chronic underfunding of schools and education combined with pre-existing social inequalities helped magnify the effect of the pandemic on children and families, exacerbating inequalities. Practical and financial support for people with symptoms or testing positive to isolate was inadequate: UK sick pay is the lowest across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and government provided minimal additional funds with strict eligible criteria, and many applications turned down.

It also did not provide adequate support for parents or carers, which probably discouraged voluntary testing. 5 In Germany, for example, parents were paid child sickness benefit when looking after children with covid-19. 6 School attendance was mandatory for all children in the UK, with families choosing to remote school being put at risk of prosecution, disproportionately affecting clinically vulnerable households. 7

The vaccine roll-out to 12-15 year olds started in the UK after most children in the US, Canada, Israel, and much of western Europe had already been vaccinated. Over 8.7 million 5-11-year-olds had been vaccinated in the US by the time the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JVCI) recommended vaccines for this group in February 2022. 66 67 The UK vaccination rate for primary school children remains far lower than the European average (two dose uptake 2.1% compared with median of 13.6% in 5-9 year olds across the EU, as of 21 July 2022). 68 69

Children deemed low priority

Early pandemic policy rightly prioritised protecting those at greatest risk of severe acute disease and death, such as older people. But as the pandemic progressed, protecting children continued to be seen as low priority. The effect on children was underestimated consistently, as severe disease in children was compared with that in adults rather than against other childhood illnesses. Although deaths from covid-19 are rare in children (85 up to June 2022, table 2 ), they are more common than from many other childhood illnesses (eg, mumps, measles, varicella, rubella). 78 Furthermore, death rates for children were calculated using population denominators, ignoring the substantial changes in infection rates during the pandemic. For example, in the five months from December 2021 to mid-April 2022 about 50% of 8-11 year olds in the UK caught covid-19 compared with an estimated 40% over the previous 20 months. 8 Large numbers of children were infected in a short period with corresponding increases in absolute numbers admitted to hospital and deaths.

Health effects of government policy on children

The effect of long covid on children was also largely ignored in policy on the basis that it was uncertain. This was despite early evidence from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that substantial numbers of children reported persistent symptoms post-infection. Given that over 90% of young children are thought to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, even if a small proportion of children were considered at risk of developing persistent infection, this is substantial effect at population level. 8 Indeed, the ONS school survey estimated that 1.8% and 4.8% of all primary school and year 7 to 13 pupils have had persistent symptoms for at least 12 weeks that affected their daily life since March 2020. 10

Government policy also did not consider the wider impact of community transmission on children, including the effect of death or long covid in carers. 12 Over 13 000 children lost a parent from covid-19 compared with estimates of 6000 for Germany, 6700 for France, 3400 for Spain, and 4800 for Italy. 79

Transmission risk was ignored

The government prioritised reopening schools but failed to do anything to reduce disruption to education caused by spread of covid-19 in schools. This resulted in high levels of absences in children and staff, even after requirements for isolation of contacts were removed. 11

Despite repeated warnings by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) 13 14 of the important role schools played in transmission ( table 1 ), policy decisions drew on an implicit or explicit narrative that schools were not major sites of transmission of the virus and that the harms of remote schooling outweighed the benefits of in-person schooling.

Evidence accumulated that schools were important sites of transmission during summer 2020. 15 16 17 24 Several ecological studies across the world identified school closures as one of the most effective interventions in modifying epidemic growth. 15 16 17 24 Large studies across the UK, 25 US, 18 Denmark, 19 and Sweden 20 also found a higher risk of infection in household members living with children compared with those not living with children, as well as in teachers doing in-person teaching.

However, the UK Health and Security Agency’s (UKHSA) research, 22 conducted at a time when attendance and infection prevalence was low, predictably showed few outbreaks within schools. This was interpreted as showing that in-school transmission was minimal. Similarly, the ONS Schools Infection Survey finding that infection rates in schoolchildren were lower than in the community, 80 was interpreted to mean that schools were not contributing significantly to transmission, when it was almost certainly because many children with covid-19 and their contacts were not sampled because they were isolating at home. There also seems to have been increased focus on a systematic review by a UK team (including members of SAGE) 26 that suggested children had reduced susceptibility to infection, with policy makers ignoring that children often have one of the highest exposure rates because of school environments.

The primary evidence included in the review had serious flaws, as has been highlighted before. 27 In particular, many studies failed to take account of the fact that infected children are often asymptomatic or have atypical symptoms 28 29 30 31 32 and will therefore be missed when case ascertainment is based on symptoms or symptom based testing. Most studies either did not test contacts or tested contacts only if they developed symptoms. Furthermore, studies that focus on seroprevalence data 81 also underestimate infection and transmission in children. This is because seroconversion occurs at a lower rate in children, 34 with waning of antibodies and seroreversion occurring more rapidly than in adults.

Another systematic review (with some of the same authors) that synthesised studies on the effect of school openings and closures 26 27 36 37 concluded that the role of schools in transmission is uncertain. This also had from major flaws, including exclusion of critical studies and misinterpretation of included evidence.

Diverse study types confirm the role of schools in transmission (ecological studies of interventions, observational studies of infection in teachers and household members of children, genomic surveillance studies 29 38 39 ). In addition, the SARS-CoV-2 Infection Survey conducted by the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) through random community household surveillance (hence avoiding the biases described above) indicated that infection rates among children were often highest when schools were open. Increases and falls mirrored the opening and closing of schools ( fig 1 ). 40 This was evident even during half terms, where drops in infection prevalence among children often preceded those in parental and other age groups.

SARS-CoV-2 prevalence measured in Office for National Statistics Infection Survey from March 2021 to 2022 and correlation with school opening. Orange highlighted regions show periods of school closure. Yellow highlighted areas show periods during which masks were required in school either in communal areas or classrooms. Blue highlighted areas show periods of lockdown. Data for adults aged ≥50 years not shown for ease of readability, but prevalence was lower than for school age children consistently

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Air quality received too little attention

Covid-19 is an airborne disease. 41 Schools are high risk settings for airborne spread, 42 and reducing transmission requires attention to air quality by ventilation (eg, opening windows, fans, and monitoring carbon dioxide levels to assess adequacy of efforts), filtration (with inbuilt or portable filters), or sterilisation (eg, with ultraviolet light). 43 Carbon dioxide levels in indoor air reflect the amount of exhaled air. The CDC recommends supplementing ventilation at 800 ppm, while the Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Associations (REHVA) stipulates a target of below 1000 ppm. 44 45 47 The UK Health and Safety Executive recommends a threshold of 800 ppm in areas where continuous talking occurs. 46

Despite recommendations by international public health bodies and SAGE committees to improve ventilation early in the pandemic, 45 48 little was done until September 2021. Over 90% of schools reported opening windows periodically to ventilate or even for most of the day, but the adequacy of these measures is hard to quantify without data on air quality. 49 All schools were promised CO 2 monitors, 50 but delivery was considerably delayed, 51 and their utility limited by inadequate supply and barriers to ventilation (eg, temperature, limited window opening). 49 51 The Department for Education (DfE) and Public Health Scotland also stipulated a much higher cut-off (>1500 ppm) for action than international standards, 52 even though high CO 2 levels impair concentration 53 and learning.

Only 3% of schools have been considered eligible for air purifiers up to January 2022. 82 Over half of English schools were still unable to use CO 2 monitors in December 2021, 51 and of the 19% that reported consistently high values of CO 2, 53% said these were not improved despite taking action to improve ventilation. 51 No policy has been introduced setting ventilation standards in new school buildings.

Masking undervalued and de-emphasised

Policy on masking in schools must be considered in the context of UK policy on masking more generally, which was characterised by competing scientific narratives, policy inertia, and public conflict (especially around government mandated encroachments on individual ‘freedoms’). 54 Masks for the public were initially depicted as having unproved efficacy for preventing transmission and as potentially harmful fomites. Powerful pressure groups, including the parent group Us for Them, campaigned against masking of children. 55

Against this background, PHE expressed concerns about mask wearing by schoolchildren, particularly those in primary school, and the English DfE stated in August 2020 that masking in school “should be avoided” as it would lead to a “negative impact on learning and teaching.” 56 Masking within classrooms was not recommended in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales throughout 2020. Masks were introduced in communal areas for secondary school students in November 2020. In Scotland, masks were introduced in communal areas only for secondary school students in August 2020 but extended to classrooms in November 2020.

Lack of masking was compounded by the large class sizes, no cap on bubble sizes (bubbles often being hundreds of children), and crowded classrooms making physical distancing impossible in many schools. This is likely to have contributed to the growth of the second wave, as the alpha variant spread within schools and into communities in late 2020. 59 60 61

UK policies contrasted starkly with those in comparable countries. In February 2021, for example, the US CDC recommended all children wear masks in school, 57 and WHO recommended masks for all children above the age of 12 years when physical distancing could not be maintained, advising a risk-based approach for 5-11 year olds based on local transmission rates and other factors. Both organisations highlighted the need for ventilation, physical distancing, and multilayered mitigations in schools.

Mask use remained low in classrooms in England, with secondary school headteachers reporting only 32% of secondary school children wearing masks in classrooms in December 2021. 49 In January 2022, nearly two years into the pandemic, UKHSA and DfE 58 acknowledged the large body of observational evidence showing that masks were effective in reducing transmission, including in school. 62 70 71 78 However, masks were reintroduced in secondary schools for just three weeks during the omicron wave ( table 1 ). Far more weight was given to limited DfE surveys showing that 80% of secondary school children thought masks made it difficult to communicate (although 70% also reported they made them feel safe). 58 These negative effects were presented without modelling the additional educational benefits if masking reduced the number of school days lost because of covid-19 infections (including staff absences and long covid).

By contrast, the Scottish working group highlighted strong support among young people for mask wearing and identified no negative effects in their qualitative research. 76 The CDC states that the limited available data indicate “no clear evidence that masking impairs emotional or language development in children.” Another study examining 7-13 year olds showed that while there may be some loss of emotional information from wearing masks, children can still infer emotions from faces and probably use many other cues to make these inferences, and that mask wearing is unlikely to have any major impact on social interactions of children in their daily lives. 77 79 83

UK policy on masking in schools relied heavily on a small, highly flawed and non-peer-reviewed study that the DfE conducted over two weeks in October 2021. 58 This study was underpowered and had too short a follow-up period to test the effectiveness of masking. It did not distinguish between mask wearing in classrooms and masking only in communal areas, and no participants were masked during lunch breaks. The lack of a significant difference between masked and unmasked arms was interpreted as evidence that the effectiveness of mask wearing was limited or inconclusive. 58 84 85 The report failed to fully acknowledge the limitations of the study design and largely ignored the global evidence that masks significantly reduced school based transmission. 18 70 71

Because masking in schools was undervalued, little attention was paid to the type or quality of mask that might be worn by children, or when masking might be particularly effective (or ineffective). Well fitting, high grade (respirator) masks protect the wearer against virus in the air, hence may have an important role in protecting clinically vulnerable children (or children with clinically vulnerable household contacts) even when others in the classroom are unmasked. The effect of masking on particular groups (eg, people withhearing impairment or special needs), and children under the age of 3 years was rightly acknowledged, but the evidence from around the world that millions of children routinely wear masks in class without an adverse effect on their wellbeing or learning was ignored. Exercise (especially prolonged and strenuous) and vocalisation (especially singing) greatly increases such emission. The removal of masks for indoor physical education, singing, and communal assemblies makes no scientific sense but was rarely flagged as high risk.

Testing and support for isolation

Given the importance of pre-symptomatic transmission, and the high levels of asymptomatic infection in children, frequent testing was important to reduce spread. However, many parents caring for children at home faced potentially unaffordable costs as there was limited financial 86 and practical support for isolation, providing little incentive for voluntary routine testing. The initial roll out of asymptomatic testing was poorly planned with little involvement of teachers and parents. 87 Uptake of testing reduced steadily to only 21% of secondary school children registering tests in May-June 2021. 88 Testing was never made available to primary school children, unlike in other European countries (eg, Austria), where accessible testing (eg, saliva tests) for young children was prioritised. Free testing ended in April 2022.

Late vaccination

The flawed narrative that children were not severely affected by covid-19 led to delays in offering vaccination to children in the UK compared with other countries. When the minutes of JCVI meetings were released belatedly in November 2021, 89 they revealed that the modelling by PHE and Warwick University had suggested a substantial benefit of vaccinating these age groups but the committee chose not to recommend it. By the time children were offered vaccination, a substantial proportion had been infected. This also led the JCVI to raise the idea that vaccination was low priority and infection was desirable to develop natural immunity in children, and “boost” parents’ immunity. 89 No evidence to support this view has been reported. UKHSA’s work has shown that children serorevert rapidly 81 and reinfection even within three months is not uncommon. 90 This is consistent with global evidence that children have lower levels and faster waning of antibodies than adults. 34 90 91 92 Recent evidence also suggests that elicited neutralising antibody titres are higher after vaccination than after infection in children. 93

JCVI minutes suggest it gave much more weight to the potential long term effects of the vaccine than to the known effects of infection. Long covid gets only a short mention, 89 even though it was known to be more common and concerning than any adverse events from the vaccine at the time. Furthermore, the JCVI, unlike other countries, recommended a 12 week wait between doses for adolescents, and the same wait between infection and dosing. This meant substantial delays in vaccination for many children who were infected before or during the vaccination schedule. These JCVI positions and recommendations went against the evidence and the policies of many other countries and organisations. 94 95 96 97

As most countries move to providing third doses to children, the UK remains well behind, with no discussions around boosters for under 16s or vaccination for children under 5. Vaccine uptake remains lower than the European average among children.

Lack of support for learning

Headteachers and their staff worked tirelessly to provide as much support for their pupils as possible during the pandemic. However, like the NHS, schools entered the pandemic greatly weakened by a decade of austerity and struggled to cope. The government’s scheme to purchase laptops for schools fell far short of what was promised. 98 Lack of appropriate remote schooling provision and technological barriers affected children unequally. 99 The most deprived students and students in state schools and colleges were less likely to experience online learning and have interactions with teachers, students, and peers than less deprived students and students in independent schools. 99 Inequalities in loss of learning in reading and numeracy predictably continued well into 2021 because of lack of support, particularly for disadvantaged students. Stripping back of catch-up funding for children has left schools, children, and families struggling. 100 Despite the behavioural insights committee repeatedly advising government to engage with key communities and stakeholders, little was done.

Broader issues

We have catalogued areas in which the response by governments at Westminster and in the devolved nations let children down (box). We trust that the public inquiry will examine these in more detail to inform the specific lessons that arise. However, there are some broader issues that must be examined.

No-one disputes that keeping schools open should be a high priority, but they should be safe, with measures to minimise transmission among children and to their families. Some children died and others have been left severely disabled. Others have been orphaned. For those affected, this is a high cost to bear. Serious illness and death of children should not be so easily dismissed. Of course these severe outcomes were much less common than in older people but this is the wrong comparison. Cancer in children is also rare, but that does not mean it can be ignored. The appropriate comparison is with other childhood illnesses.

More widely, much of the evidence that was generated and used was problematic. Many of the studies that should have been able to inform policy were poorly designed and inadequate to answer the question posed. Key reviews misinterpreted some of the evidence examined.

What was it about the decision making process in the UK that, while claiming to act in the best interests of children, let them down so badly? In many cases it seems that there was a failure to update guidance on, for example, school transmission, efficacy of masks, importance of airborne spread, or illness in children. The debate on children and covid has become particularly polarised, 101 but structured and predetermined processes to review evidence, both domestic and international, might have facilitated translation of evidence into policy and incorporated learning from mistakes into future policy making.

Questions for the public inquiry

Why was preventing covid-19 in children deemed low priority

Why was transmission risk in schools underestimated?

Why was so little attention paid to air quality?

Why were testing and support for isolating given little attention?

Why was masking in schools undervalued and de-emphasised?

Why was vaccination offered late to children and considered low priority?

Why was more not done to support learning?

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare DG is funded by a UKRI/Rutherford HDR-UK fellowship (MR/S003711/2). CP, SM, GS, TG, and MM are members of Independent SAGE. SM participates in the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B).

Contributors and sources: DG is a clinical epidemiologist who has researched, published, and engaged widely on evidence of childhood transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools, and impact of covid-19 on children. CP is a mathematician with extensive experience in covid-19 research and modelling, synthesis of data and evidence into policy, and public communication of data during the pandemic. TG is a GP and public health professor who has worked extensively on synthesis of evidence on masks, airborne transmission, and long covid, and public engagement during the pandemic. SM is a professor of behavioural psychology and member of SPI-B, and played an important role in advising on public health measures, including mitigations in schools, and effective public messaging and public health policy around covid-19 during the pandemic. GS is a former regional director of public health in England with extensive experience with public health, and research on effective implementation of public health policies during the pandemic. MM is professor of European public health, whose research focuses on broad social and political determinants of public health and policy, and the role of misinformation and disinformation in public health policy. CY is a senior lecturer in mathematical biology whose research has focused on understanding the impact of interventions and policy on public health during the pandemic. DG wrote the first draft. CP, TG, SM, GS, MM, KY, and HZ contributed to restructuring, rewriting, editing, and shaping the manuscript. DG is the guarantor.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

This article is part of a series commissioned, peer reviewed, and edited by The BMJ . The advisory group for the series was chaired by Kara Hanson and included Martin McKee, although he was not involved in the decision making on the papers that he co-authored. Kamran Abbasi was the lead editor for The BMJ .

This article is made freely available for personal use in accordance with BMJ's website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

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Hope in short supply as election looms

Universities are in a funding cul-de-sac, blocked in by negative rhetoric about their role and value. will a likely change of government provide a way out.

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They don’t happen often, but just occasionally Times Higher Education makes mistakes.

One that sticks in the mind, not because of the error itself but because of the way it was dealt with, involved a short news report on a debate in 2015, in which Lord John Patten, a former Conservative education secretary, had opined about Rhodes Must Fall protests in Oxford.

The article incorrectly attributed the comments to Lord Patten of Barnes – that is, Chris Patten, who as chancellor of the University of Oxford had rather a lot of skin in that particular game.

When such errors occur the response is often a complaint from a communications director, occasionally from a law firm. Not so in this case: the Oxford chancellor simply picked up the phone and asked personally for the mistake to be corrected.

From someone so eminent – a former governor of Hong Kong and chairman of both the BBC and Conservative Party – it was an understated approach, and in contrast to the performative and confrontational communications strategies pursued by many politicians today.

I mention it because, in an interview with THE this week, Lord Patten describes himself as having been  “chairman of the Conservative Party when there was one” , signalling what one might interpret as despair at the state of the current government.

Among the frustrations for someone who understands the value of higher education and research is the funding cul-de-sac facing universities.

“If we’re going to continue to be a world power in research and innovation and universities – as the government says it wants to be – we are going to have to have more support,” he says.

He suggests that the only way out of the current predicament is a cross-party approach to the problem, but he warns that there is little to encourage optimism that this can be achieved.

He also expresses frustration with politicians’ willingness to harness the culture wars to appeal to certain factions of their party or the electorate at the expense of the “generosity of spirit” which typified his own approach to politics (and to correcting the occasional editorial error).

As Lord Patten prepares to depart from his Oxford role, the Conservative Party he used to chair is, polls suggest, preparing to depart from government, with Labour waiting in the wings.

No one talking to the Labour team at present is emerging with much hope for significant changes in policy direction for higher education after a potential Labour win.

Mainly, it is said, that is because there are so many competing – and politically more pressing – priorities for public investment; put more bluntly, it is because “there is no money”.

But it has to be acknowledged that it is also because a Labour government would inherit a country with real, and it seems deeply held, doubts about what higher education’s  role, shape and size should be, and whether it is currently providing what the country needs .

This is a daunting set of headwinds for a sector that might, in normal circumstances, feel some optimism that a general election would provide the reset needed to resolve current challenges.

As a result, while there may be some small rabbits to be produced from undersized hats – something on maintenance grants, perhaps – there is little sense among higher education’s chattering classes that England’s tuition fee freeze is about to thaw, and real concern that the graduate visa route may be up for review regardless of who is in power.

What shadow ministers do seem to be offering is an end to the “talking down” of higher education, including as an international export underpinning universities’ financial viability.

At face value, this does not seem like much: an offer to replace a boot on the neck with some boosterism about higher education seems the very least an incoming government could do.

But perhaps that is to dismiss such a shift too lightly, or to underestimate how risky waiting for a government-led solution to higher education’s challenges might be.

As one sector leader put it recently: “In the past I have worried that we haven’t explained the issues we face well enough. But what concerns me now is that we have explained the problem so well that the politicians will come and do something about it. We need to find solutions before we get to that point.”

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Teaching union is accused of hostility to Jews

The UK’s largest teaching union has been accused of being hostile to Jewish teachers after it said Israel had a hard-right racist government that was ­fuelling the conflict in Gaza.

The National Education Union (NEU) plans to submit a motion at its annual conference in Bournemouth next week that describes Israel as guilty of apartheid policies. It will debate ­whether it should publish and circulate educational resources to “increase understanding of Palestine and Israel”.

Daniel Kebede, the new NEU general secretary, has said the union has a strong history of “standing in solidarity with Palestine” and has urged rallies to “globalise the intifada”.

The motion criticises Israel ’s “devastating military assault on Gaza” and says the British government is trying to criminalise peaceful tactics of

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Spotify tests video courses to teach everything from music production to Excel

Spotify has carved out a business for itself in music streaming, podcast entertainment and audiobooks. Now, in its ongoing efforts to get its 600 million+ users to spend more time and money on its platform, Spotify is spinning up a new line of content: e-learning.

Starting with a rollout in the U.K., Spotify is testing the waters for an online education offering of freemium video courses. Produced in partnership with third parties like the BBC and Skillshare, at least two lessons will be free, with the cost of a total course ranging from £20 to £80 on average. The prices will be the same, regardless of whether you are a basic or premium user, at least for now.

Mohit Jitani, the London-based product director for the education business, said in an interview that pricing choices were part of what it’s testing before considering how to roll out more widely. “With this launch, we’re trying to understand the demand first,” he said. “Then we optimize how we can make it more compelling and exciting.”

The content will live in both Spotify’s home and browse tabs (under “Courses”), and it’s accessible on the web as well as via the Spotify mobile app.

The courses are pitched somewhere between YouTube, Master Class and LinkedIn Learning: Videos in the current catalog cover a wide range of subjects, from music production through to learning how to use Excel, as well as lessons on — you guessed it — how to create online learning lessons to turn musicians and others into “education creators.”

Unsurprising for a market estimated to have been worth more than $315 billion in 2023 , there are plenty of online learning sites on the web these days, some of which have been innovators in interactive content and other media formats — you can even find a number of startups aspiring to be the “Spotify for education” if you Google that term — Spotify’s educational push is focused around one-directional, on-demand video.

Some courses appear to have supplementary material, although that will be more in the realm of extra documents rather than tests or other interactions. Jitani declined to comment on whether Spotify would launch any kind of interaction or gamification in the future — or, indeed, if games of any kind are on its roadmap right now.

The first partners for Courses are Skillshare (which will focus on creatives), PLAYvirtuoso (music industry courses), BBC Maestro (Master Class-esque) and Thinkific (for those inspired to build their skills into online learning classes of their own).

Spotify, Jitani said, would be looking to curate which courses it offers, and it will base curation on what people are already listening to and searching for on its platform. There appears to be no limit, though. If you look at the catalogs of these respective providers, you’ll see that the topics cover a pretty wide breadth — and bread .

“We’ll learn a lot about what people are actually interested in [and] we will start getting a lot of segments around that,” Jitani said. “And then we’ll go and find… the best content.”

Third-party publishers own the videos and license them to Spotify, but they will be hosted and purchased on Spotify itself. In terms of revenue share, the creator, publisher and Spotify will all get a share of the sales, with content partners overseeing payments to creators.

Spotify isn’t specifying what kind of cut will be going to whom, nor whether it will potentially offer any kind of discount or other benefit to users who are already premium subscribers on the platform.

Why education? Why the UK?

The move points to Spotify’s strategy to continue diversifying its business, while also aiming to build a path to more consistent profitability and stronger margins. It’s picked the U.K. for this, Jitani said, because it’s a huge market for the company and is already one of the most engaged in the world.

Financially, Spotify continues to see a lot of ups and downs in the current market. It went through three rounds of layoffs last year; and it has been unprofitable more than profitable over the years, most recently posting a net loss of $81 million   in its quarterly earnings in February .

Yes, the dry realms of online learning and professional development might sound like a reach for a company still best known for music streaming, but there are three areas where it makes some sense.

With its podcasting business continuing to grow, Spotify is picking up a lot of data on what people are doing on the platform, and it’s finding a close correlation between some of the most popular podcasts on Spotify and education content.

Around half of Spotify Premium subscribers have listened to education or self-help themed podcasts, Spotify says. Spotify can use the same kind of recommendation surfacing that it uses for music and podcasts to cross-promote. Think of a podcast with a “business guru” now recommending a paid course with that person. Spotify’s making a bet that one will help sell the other.

Alongside this, Spotify has long been working on tools for creators to help them manage and grow their earnings. Offering educational content aimed at running a business, or improving your music production, fits with that.

Third of all, there is the video element. Spotify’s been trying to get deeper into video for the better part of a decade.

That hasn’t translated to being a YouTube or Netflix rival yet. Video was mentioned a grand total of one time in the company’s last earning call, where CEO Daniel Ek vaguely described video podcasting as “growing in a healthy way.” But it launched music videos in select markets earlier this month, and now we have an earnest effort in educational videos. It may find its groove yet.

The SAT is now digital for the first time. One test expert says the new format makes the test easier.

• A new digital SAT is now being offered for the first time. 
• The test is shorter, adaptive, and tests real-world skills.
• One test expert says it's easier than past versions but clarifies it's still not an easy test. 

In March, the first US high school students took the SAT exam — digitally.

This switch to digital comes as many top-tier colleges, such as Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown, are reversing their decision to be exam-optional — a trend that started during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a recent study suggests that test scores actually do predict academic performance and college success — better than high school grades.

Shaan Patel — the founder and CEO of Prep Expert, with more than two decades of experience with the popular college entrance exam — told Business Insider the test will be significantly different than in the past. It may even be easier.

The digital SAT has some content changes

For starters, the digital test will be shorter and adaptive. That means the test will get harder as the student progresses through it, but the level of difficulty will depend on how they performed on earlier questions.

According to Patel, the digital SAT is also more "student-friendly" than previous years.

For example, in the past, there was a section where students couldn't use the calculator, but on the digital SAT, Patel said a calculator could be used on all the questions.

"There's even a digital calculator built into the testing application, in case you don't have a graphing calculator," Patel said.

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In addition, the reading passages are a lot shorter in the new exam. The essay section has also been dissolved, and the grammar questions have now been integrated with the reading section.

"So it really tests your reading and writing together, which I think will be a welcome change for most people," Patel said.

Plus, there are new question types where students read notes and decipher what is most relevant.

"I think that's a super useful skill in the real world where you get a long email, and you have to sift through the important data," Patel said.

He added students no longer have to memorize difficult, obscure vocabulary words that were once required.

The digital SAT is easier

"The new question types are actually testing students in a much more real-world manner than the previous versions of the SAT," Patel said. "Overall, this test will be more relevant to real-world skills . So, I'm optimistic the changes will be good."

He said, in that regard, the SAT will be easier.

"But, I want to be careful about saying it's easy," Patel said. "I don't think it's easy because what's going to happen is with the adaptive testing structure…you are going to see harder questions as you go along, even though you're going to see fewer questions."

Prep for the SAT shouldn't change all that much

Patel recommended that all students download the College Board's Bluebook app , where they can take practice tests and familiarize themselves with the new adaptive feature.

"They must get used to not letting their brain become overused at the end of the test since that is when most students will encounter the hardest questions," Patel said.

But the most important piece of advice remained the same: prep early.

"I usually recommend getting started in 10th grade so that by the time the fall of 11th grade rolls around, you'll be ready to knock the PSAT out of the park," Patel said, "because the PSAT, especially this new digital PSAT , is more similar to the digital SAT than ever."

Watch: The SAT is getting a massive overhaul — and they’re ditching one of the most annoying parts

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Sunak UK government oversees “catastrophic” teacher shortage and education funding crisis

Tom pearce 20 march 2024.

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Teacher numbers in the UK are showing no signs of improving as recruitment and retention of teachers continue to fall due to the pressures of the profession.

The Department for Education (DfE) in England under the control of the Conservative government has slashed its recruitment targets for secondary teacher trainees by 9 percent in response to missing its target by half this year. There is mounting evidence of a deepening supply crisis as year on year the government has missed recruitment targets.

The government sets annual targets against which recruitment is assessed and predicted that there needs to be 23,955 postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) secondary trainees next academic year to provide enough new teachers for 2025-2026.

However, this target is down from the 26,360 secondary trainees that the DfE said it would need for this year—a target that it missed by half which has sent alarm bells ringing around the sector. Only 50 percent of the 26,360 secondary trainees (13,102) the government said were needed this year were recruited onto courses, prompting school leaders to label once again the teacher shortage as “catastrophic”.

The only outcome is one of desperation for schools who are struggling right now to fill vacant posts. This will only be exacerbated by the reduction of teachers entering the profession in the future. The crisis will not be solved by government fudging the numbers and hoping that teachers will miraculously appear.

The government's other plan is to devalue the profession even further by developing proposals for a new non-graduate route into teaching, labelled the Teacher Degree Apprenticeship (TDA). The TDA will offer an employed route for non-graduates to enter teaching. These apprentices will study for a degree and Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) while working in a school over a period of about four years, with about 40 percent of their time spent on academic study each year. The DfE described this as an “earn and learn” approach, attractive to teaching assistants and other career changers.

The lowering of entry requirements to admit non-graduates to a course of ITT will only undermine teaching as a graduate career choice, making recruitment worse. It also aims to create a two-tier workforce on the cheap.

The recruitment situation is even worse in subjects such as maths, science, art and design suffering from lower numbers, which have therefore seen an increase in targets. Overall, trainee targets increased across eight secondary subjects for 2024-25, and decreased for nine subjects.

There has been some recognition of shortages in the primary targets with the raising of the primary teacher trainee target by 2 percent, from 9,180 to 9,400, after the Tories lowered it last year. The DfE said the increase was a result of primary recruitment and retention forecasts “becoming less favourable this year, leading to a slightly increased need for ITT trainees to meet future demand, despite falling pupil numbers”.

The DfE has justified the reduction due to “more favourable supply forecasts” for both new teachers and returners in the secondary sector. The department also said it has lowered the secondary teacher trainee target this year because the growth of secondary student numbers has slowed.

But this takes no account of the number of educators that are leaving the profession and are also considering a move out of the classroom in the next academic year. The government is totally impervious to the reality that teachers are exhausted, burnt out and leaving the profession in droves. There has been an influx of social media sites that are places of solace for educators. One Facebook site “Life After Teaching - Exit the Classroom and Thrive” has over 150,000 members.

In Scotland, under the Scottish National Party-run devolved parliament there is a refusal to staff schools beyond the absolute bare minimum (and sometimes not even to that level) making a difficult job increasingly impossible. Figures released by the Liberal Democrats show that, since 2018, more than 1,300 new teachers have walked away from the classroom entirely within the first five years, not even taking up a different role within education.

The biggest increases have come from new teachers leaving the profession within three or four years of having qualified. In 2018, 110 individuals fell into this category, but by last year that figure had almost doubled.

Analysis of DfE data the National Association of Head Teachers and school leaders’ union (NAHT) shows that England currently has the highest number of unfilled teaching posts in over a decade, with one in seven schools in England reporting at least one vacancy.

Vacancies more than doubled between 2020 and 2022, from 1,098 to 2,334, the NAHT analysis revealed. The union found that one in four secondary schools have reported a vacant or temporary role. Over half of schools in the outer boroughs of London had a job available.

The NAHT call for a “double digit” pay rise for teachers despite Downing Street demanding that pay awards should “return to a more sustainable level”. This would be as low as a 1 percent increase if the independent School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB)—which makes pay recommendations in England—is to be believed.

School leaders are asking for at least a 10 percent increase in all teaching salaries. The NAHT stated in evidence submitted to STRB that this is needed to counter the “recruitment and retention crisis”, and the uplift must be higher than average pay settlements in other industries across the country.

Last year hundreds of thousands of teachers—as part of a strike wave across the public and private sectors—went on strike demanding a fully funded, above inflation wage rise of 12 percent. Instead, the education unions, including the NAHT pushed through a sell-out deal of 6.5 percent (of which 3 percent would have to be funded from schools’ decimated budgets). The deal was put at the point where for the first time ever all major education unions had passed ballot thresholds for action which could have shut all schools nationally. The response of the union leaders was to sabotage this collective action, with the NAHT declaring that 6.5 percent was “an offer that our members can live with.”

Following this rout, the unions are dialing up the rhetoric again with NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman stating that the union’s evidence shows “the real-life impact of the government’s neglect of teaching staff over the last decade”.

“It could not be clearer that teachers and school leaders are reacting to eroded salaries and the cost-of-living crisis, as well as increasing workload, pressure and lack of wellbeing, and are leaving the profession,” he said. Whiteman added that the government needed “to send a clear signal to the workforce that change is coming—that starts with an urgent double digit pay uplift”.

Commenting on the government’s decision to cut secondary school training targets, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said, “This Government’s failure to hit its own teacher training targets stretches back more than a decade. A generation of children have already had to endure the consequences, in many cases taught by teachers without the relevant subject specialism. Teachers and school leaders are forced to bake this into the system, making the best of a bad situation.

He complained of a government “crisis of their own making. A decade-and-a-half of pay cuts. Sky-high workload… The sooner [Education Secretary] Gillian Keegan wakes up to the causes of the shortage, the better the education system will be.”

Why should educators put their trust in the NEU, NAHT, or any of the sell-out unions to challenge the Conservative government on the schools crisis? They have collaborated in a “decade-and-a-half” of cost cutting, below inflation pay deals and sacrificed safety against COVID in schools.

The lessons from these bitter experiences must be drawn to provide the foundation for a genuine fight to defend public education and the pay and conditions of teachers by taking struggle out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracy and forming independent rank-and file-committees to fight for education.

The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) calls for:

*The immediate abolition of punitive education inspectorate Ofsted.

*Abolition of all anti-strike legislation including Minimum Service Levels

* Billions to make schools COVID safe and structurally sound to resolve the RAAC crisis

* Reduction in class sizes and the fully funded recruitment of tens of thousands of qualified teachers

Sign up to join the committee , read our newsletter and participate in its work.

• Starmer confirms Labour’s UK education strategy is warmed-over Thatcherism 16 July 2023
• Education funding crisis devastating UK teaching profession 4 December 2023
• UK government and education unions leave life threatening RAAC crisis unaddressed 29 September 2023
• UK head teacher takes own life after school fails government Ofsted inspection 27 March 2023
• Inquest into suicide of UK headteacher Ruth Perry demonstrates that school inspectorate Ofsted must be abolished! 10 December 2023
• UK heads and teachers condemn Ofsted inspections after Ruth Perry suicide inquest verdict 21 December 2023
• Abolish UK school inspectorate Ofsted—fully funded schools not punitive inspections! 21 June 2023
• Movement to abolish Ofsted watchdog must be linked to fight for fully-funded inflation busting pay rise for UK teachers 17 April 2023

• Universities

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Schools in England accused of closing down debate on Israel-Gaza conflict

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Other lives Ian Sutherland obituary

Euro visions Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe

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For many of us, boarding school was no gilded life

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Alabama bans DEI in schools and says bathrooms must be designated by ‘biological sex’

• Private schools
• Israel-Gaza war

US, UK Impose Sanctions on Hamas-Aligned Fundraising Network, US Treasury Says

FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

(Reuters) -The United States and Britain imposed sanctions on a fund-raising network aligned with the Palestinian group Hamas that carried out an Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

It said in a statement that the punitive measures target two individuals and three entities described as key financial facilitators involved in fundraising for Hamas, which both countries brand a terrorist group.

"Treasury remains committed to degrading Hamas' ability to finance its terrorist activities, including through online fundraising campaigns that seek to funnel money directly to the group," Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson said in the statement.

War in Israel and Gaza

"This action is being taken as part of a collaborative effort with the United Kingdom's Office of Foreign Sanctions Implementation, which is implementing sanctions on these same targets," the statement said.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri denied any link between the group and the entities and persons listed by the United States and Britain.

"These institutions have no connection with the Hamas movement and the decision is another evidence of the American partnership in the war against the Palestinian people," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Photos You Should See

The measures target the Gaza Now organization, which Treasury said had started raising funds online after the Hamas attack. It is the fourth U.S. and British coordinated sanctions action related to Hamas fundraising efforts since Oct 7.

Israel says Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people in the October attack and still hold more than 130 hostages in Gaza. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's subsequent offensive in Gaza, the Hamas-ruled Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Nidal al-Mughrabi;Editing by Howard Goller)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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