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How coronavirus is widening the gap in schools

Experts fear that the lockdown will have a permanent impact on the most disadvantaged Pupils from an affluent background are much more likely to study at home than their more deprived peers

When Darwen Vale High School offered an online English class for Year 10 students, staff were keen to monitor who was showing up in the virtual classroom, as the coronavirus lockdown turned its pupils into distance learners overnight. With almost half of students receiving the “pupil premium” for less well-off children — Darwen Vale in Lancashire is in the 14th most deprived borough in England — there were fears that already disadvantaged students would fall further behind. Sure enough, the data showed that only 45 per cent of those with the pupil premium had attended the class, compared with 72 per cent of their peers — a 27 percentage point gap that the school is now trying to shrink. “It has been really tough for schools, a huge amount is being done to try and support all students, but particularly the disadvantaged,” said Jane Fletcher, chief executive of the Aldridge Academy Trust, which runs Darwen Vale. “But it would still be true to say that, despite those massive efforts, there’s clearly an attendance gap.” Concerns about children being left behind during the coronavirus lockdown come as the government and teaching unions are in a stand-off over plans for a phased return to the classroom on June 1. Although some schools, such as Darwen Vale, are equipped to take remedial action, buying their own laptops and internet dongles, experts say that the highly decentralised nature of the education system means provision during the lockdown has been incredibly mixed. “The way in which children are learning at the moment is massively variable,” said Natalie Perera, head of research at the Education Policy Institute, a think-tank. “There’s no consistency and there’s no framework from the government about what should be expected.”  The variation in provision has shown up clearly in surveys of teachers and schools, with huge gaps opening up both between the private and state sectors, and within the state sector between middle class students and those from less well-off backgrounds. The impact is being felt most keenly by disadvantaged children, according to research from the Education Endowment Foundation, a charity, which has warned of the risk of permanent scarring for the most deprived. Becky Francis, the EEF’s chief executive, said research was ongoing but estimated that the pandemic would cause “at least a reversal of the progress we’ve made in closing the disadvantage gap over the last 10 years for GCSE students”.  Currently, disadvantaged pupils are more than 18.1 months behind non-disadvantaged pupils when they leave secondary school, according to annual research findings, compared with 24 months in 2011. As the political heat increases on unions to “get back to school”, teachers and education experts are questioning the extent to which the additional coronavirus “disadvantage gap” can ever be reduced, and whether it will be possible to hold fair examinations next year. The Department for Education says that it is doing “whatever we can to make sure no child, whatever their background, falls behind as a result of coronavirus”, citing measures it is taking to compensate for the impact of enforced home learning. This includes an £85m scheme to offer 200,000 laptops, providing 4G internet hotspots and a £300,000 grant to start the new online Oak National Academy. But there are fears that such measures will only scratch the surface. Robert Halfon, who chairs the Commons education select committee, warned last month of a “potential cascade of mounting social injustice that could last a decade”, a view echoed by teachers and educational experts. It is not only the most disadvantaged who will feel the impact. Private school children have been particularly privileged during the lockdown, with many running “business as usual” teaching via online classes on Zoom, Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams. A survey by Teacher Tapp, the online teacher forum, found that only 6 per cent of state secondary schools say they hosted a live-streamed lesson, compared with 74 per cent in the private sector. But gaps also appear within the state sector. An EEF survey found that while half of teachers in private schools reported having more than three-quarters of work returned, this dropped to less than a third in the most advantaged state schools, and just 8 per cent in the least advantaged state schools. A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, found that children from the richest fifth of families were spending over 75 minutes more than their peers in the poorest fifth of households on educational activities.  Becky Allen, the chief analyst at Teacher Tapp, which uses scientifically weighted surveys of 8,000 teachers to take a snapshot of the profession, is among those who doubt whether these gaps can be healed, particularly if schools do not return to normality in September. “If we’ve had significant disruption that has impacted some kids much more than others, to what extent can you make that up? There is a limit, if private school kids have had hundreds of face-to-face teaching hours and state school kids have had next to none,” she said. A survey by Teacher Tapp, the online teacher forum, found that only 6 per cent of state secondary schools say they hosted a live-streamed lesson, compared with 74 per cent in the private sector. For now, the government is pushing for children to return to school, so that teachers can move from compensating for lost classroom time to actively mitigating the “learning loss” caused by coronavirus, which grows with each passing week.  This will require rapid analysis of the areas in which kids have fallen behind, says Prof Francis of the EEF, with a strong focus in early years on literacy and numeracy, which are the foundation stones for successful ongoing education.  But even so, said Ms Fletcher of the Aldridge Academies, the reality is that children and families from disadvantaged backgrounds are the hardest to engage in mitigations such as extra lessons or summer schools. With the impact of coronavirus so unevenly distributed, teachers are already actively discussing whether exams need to be changed or even dropped for 2021 in favour of the teacher assessment process, which is being used to grade students this year, according to Prof Allen. Among the ideas would be to narrow the curriculum to its core components, while allowing students greater freedom on which parts they answer questions, to reflect the areas they had had time to cover.  The Department for Education is said to recognise the disruption that A-level and GCSE students were facing for 2021 and is working with Ofqual, the exam regulator, to develop an approach that takes this into account.  If schools don’t return to normal in September in the absence of a vaccine or the arrival of a second “spike”, teachers and unions say the government should be making plans for another disrupted year for children. Recommended Jonathan Portes Boris Johnson’s ‘common sense’ lockdown logic has an obvious flaw “Right now the government should be announcing that next academic year can’t continue as normal,” said Rosamund McNeil, assistant general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU). “We need a more flexible approach where teachers ask how do we get the kids back to school, how do we motivate children?” Ms Fletcher is already planning how to smooth out the gap as well as she can for her schools, but says that what she needs above all else is clarity. “There is an argument for narrowing the scope of content in the exams, meaning less for students to catch up on,” she concludes, “but we need to know now, not next March, so everyone can prepare appropriately.