Every teacher will tell you a different story of the pandemic and its impact on pupils. But the general themes will be similar: some children have thrived while others are struggling; some have experienced trauma while others are untouched by tragedy; and among the few who have experienced face-to-face teaching, some blossomed while others have had an unsettling and disruptive time.

Working out which scenario fits each pupil - and to what degree - will be a huge undertaking. Unfortunately, schools are under pressure to do that work quickly. The phrase of the day, “catch up”, is being uttered in every policy briefing on education and dominating social media edu-chats.

The government’s announcement of its £700 million “recovery package” used the same language, promising cash for schools to help young people to “catch up on missed learning and development due to the pandemic”.

The noise is such that the public expects the impact of the past year to disappear thanks to a few months of intense intervention. The truth, as every teacher knows, is more complicated.

So how do schools begin to tackle the huge problems they face under such intense scrutiny - and what should the next few months look like, as schools attempt a return to “normal”?

Covid and schools: Keeping heads above water

Before we get to the specifics, there is a huge conceptual issue to address first, according to Rob Webster, associate professor at the UCL Institute of Education.

“The question has to be, catching up with what?” he says. “The way this has woven itself into the discourse is that there are some children who have fallen behind and they will need to catch up. But there aren’t really any kids for whom education has been carrying on as normal, so it’s not entirely clear what it is they are catching up with: is it some expectation of where things would have been had things carried on as normal?”

If the answer is the latter, then coming up with a plan for that will be incredibly difficult, he says, as the situation in schools is still in flux and may be for a long time yet. While questions remain about vaccination schedules, distancing and future closures, we simply don’t know what the rest of the school year will look like, let alone beyond that.

“At the moment, it’s a shifting target,” Webster says.

“They’re trying to address the problem of lost learning time as it is still happening.”

If you imagine the situation as a flood, you begin to see the problem. The water is rushing into a city and the rain is still falling. Officials measure water levels. They then rush off to calculate the cost of fixing the problem and plan the remedial works. But by the time the plans are ready, the water level has already risen by another foot, and the measuring and planning has to start over again.

Of course, you can make the point that you definitely know there is a flood, and similarly in education it is safe to predict that most children will not have covered as much of the curriculum as they would have done had they been in school. But how far that enables you to “fix” the situation is debatable. The task of finding and addressing the gaps will be enormous, and will require “rigorous assessment” for us to even begin to get a useful picture, Webster says.

Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), agrees. She points out that the task is so complex that using the term “catch up” to describe it is far too simplistic.

“It could be read as suggesting a bit of a sticking-plaster solution,” she says. “As in, ‘There’s been a bit of learning loss, and then we’ll just remediate that in the classroom and everything will be fine.’ I don’t think that that’s necessarily the intention, but that can be the inference, certainly.”

As the pandemic continues, she explains, it’s becoming clear that the idea of simply making up for lost time is “really inadequate to the task”.

“We’re going to need a really concerted, sustained strategic approach to the remediation of learning loss,” Francis continues. “We need a short-term approach, a medium-term approach and a long-term approach to this issue of compensation and mitigating the impact of the pandemic on young people’s learning and life chances.”

All those approaches need to be based on hard data, which is incredibly hard to gather accurately at the moment. However, some have attempted to begin that process. For example, a report published by the EEF at the end of January details the effect of the first school closures on reading and maths among six- and seven-year-olds. Researchers looked at the tests taken in autumn 2020 by nearly 6,000 key stage 1 pupils in 168 schools and found that, compared with a cohort taking the same test in 2017, they were, on average, making two months’ less progress in both subjects.

The data also highlights what the EEF has labelled a “large and concerning” gap between disadvantaged students and their non-disadvantaged peers, with the equivalent of seven months’ learning separating them (the 2017 data didn’t compare the performance of disadvantaged pupils with others, so it’s not clear if the gap has widened).

“The gap was already substantial between free-school-meals kids and their more affluent peers, but seven months is really profound,” Francis says. “And the fact that we can see this for both maths and reading is really concerning.”

A report published in late February came to similar conclusions after exploring data from 250,000 primary school pupils (on assessments taken in autumn 2019, summer or September 2020, and late autumn 2020). Researchers found that primary pupils in England are now, in general, about a month behind previous averages in reading and maths, and two months behind in grammar, punctuation and spelling. But there was a greater decline in attainment for students who were already low-attaining, eligible for the Pupil Premium and/or attending schools in more deprived areas, with average assessment scores falling at approximately double the rate of others. Regional differences also appeared, with children in the north hardest hit in terms of grammar, punctuation and spelling, while those in the Midlands had the biggest decline in maths.

It would be easy to read data like this and jump to conclusions about what should be done, but the picture in individual schools may be - or is even likely to be - very different. In addition, Ben Styles, head of the trials unit at the National Foundation for Educational Research, who led the research and analysis of the data in the report, says that it’s important to drill down into the figures for them to be useful.

“If you’re going to think about targeting catch-up, nuance is important,” he says. “Yes, the disadvantage gap is widening in maths and reading, but the distribution shape, overall, of attainment is quite different between maths and reading so we’d need to do more work to develop a precise targeting on the basis of this study, because it would be different for reading and maths.

“It’s useful to measure the gaps for context and for policy and so on, but it’s important to emphasise that we’re doing more than just measuring gaps, because measuring gaps is not that useful for teachers.”

He adds that further diagnostic information linked to the research - on exactly where children have fallen behind - is due to be released soon to offer more meaningful guidance to schools.

The truth is that even this data will have limited value to individual schools: it will be a point in the right direction, not a shortcut to the destination. Schools will likely need to assess children regularly in the first few months to find where the gaps are, be they content-based or skills-based. And, again, those tests will need to seek out nuance.

As Tes columnist and primary headteacher Michael Tidd recently tweeted: “The *gaps* model treats learning like it’s bricks: we just need a few extra hours on site to fill the holes. But the unsettled year is much more likely to have weakened the mortar, or used weak bricks. Simply finding the problems is hard, and every wall needs different solutions.”

The problems being targeted will also need to be pastoral and behavioural, not just academic. Support structures during the pandemic crumbled and, at the extreme end, there may be complex mental health issues that have gone unsupported. At the other end of the scale, simply getting pupils into the habit of attending school and following rules will require attention.

Catch-up: The importance of normal routines

William Cook is a senior lecturer in the Future Economies Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University and lead author of a report, published in December and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, looking at disadvantage in early secondary school. He says that, looking at many catch-up projects implemented over the year, a strong argument emerges that re-establishing normal routines is “perhaps more important than anything in responding to this crisis”.

Even once all of the diagnostic assessment is done, and any pastoral and behavioural issues have been identified and supported, the next step of addressing students’ learning will not be as simple as sticking a few hours on the end of the school day for some intense catch up. Schools have been trying to address the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers for decades, and that chasm has never been closed.

But is there anything from that long history of catch-up attempts that could inform schools over the next few months?

Cook’s report analyses a Year 7 catch-up policy that was in place between 2001 and 2007, offering “materials and guidance for schools...in English and maths for pupils that did not meet the expected standard at the end of primary school”. It compares the GCSE results of this cohort with young people who had not taken part in the catch-up programme, to see what impact the intervention had in the long term.

“What I found was basically that there was no effect at all,” Cook says. “So even though this catch-up programme may have helped those young people at that point in time, by the time they came to do their GCSEs, it hadn’t changed that trajectory in the way that the provision was intended to do. And I think what that is leading to is that even if these interventions look good and seem initially effective, their effect fades out over time.”

This fade-out effect is something that has garnered much discussion in early years research, particularly around the long-term impact of early intervention. The extent to which interventions at one stage of schooling affect later performance has been disputed, with compelling evidence in both directions. But what most agree on is that a short-term effort to “catch up” a pupil needs to be followed by sustained efforts to keep them caught up.

Cook’s report also explores the effectiveness of a series of summer schools for disadvantaged primary pupils between 2012 and 2015, which were intended to familiarise those involved with secondary school, as well as bringing in elements of literacy and numeracy. These provisions were continually beset by issues with attendance, Cook states, and were found to not have “any detectable impact on GCSE attainment or early secondary school attendance for disadvantaged pupils”.

“The message is that these one-off things that look good on paper probably don’t have a long-term effect,” he says. “One of the recommendations in the report is that you have to continuously evaluate your provision because it’s not enough to say ‘we’ll have a summer school’ and then it’s all fixed.

The government’s catch-up package does include funding, as part of the Recovery Premium, to “bolster summer provision for their students, for example laying on additional clubs and activities”, and the EEF has found that summer schools can bring pupils who attend approximately two months’ additional progress, and as much as four additional months’ progress when the summer school is “intensive, well-resourced, and involve[s] small group tuition by trained and experienced teachers”. It adds that summer schools “without a clear academic component are not usually associated with learning gains”.

Cook says that before planning how to bring students in over the summer, however, we need to be taking a close look at their everyday engagement with school.

“Another finding from the report was that patterns of school absences appear linked to GCSE attainment years down the line; for example, Year 7 absences have some predictive power of key stage 2 to key stage 4 progress,” he explains. “Rather than [putting the focus on] catch up, getting attendance back to normal might be the biggest challenge and [it may be] where the best use of resources might lie, at least initially, as pupils have become accustomed to not coming into school.”

But even if pupils are in, will they actually be with their classes? The trouble with the current catch-up narrative, and the pressure it creates, is that it may prompt schools to seek out numerous interventions that will typically be delivered in small groups and led by teaching assistants. We know from research from Webster and others that interventions were already taking children out of the classroom for long periods of time before the pandemic; if the catch-up challenges are now more complex, children may find themselves on a carousel of out-of-class interventions, which would be a long way from the “normal” that Cook envisages.

Webster certainly believes that pursuing targeted interventions that disrupt the rhythm of a student’s education may not be the best way to go in the aftermath of the latest lockdown. He says we should be wary of any interventions that pull students out of lessons to catch up on other lessons, as this creates a “perpetual state of catch up” through a “tick box” or “bolt on” approach.

“[The intervention] needs to be considered as an integral part of the machine,” he says. “If you’re going to make the most of them, it takes a big shift in mindset to think about how interventions are worked into the timetable, how they’re delivered [and] how the people that deliver them are trained and supported. Why is it, for example, that catch-up programmes and interventions to do with literacy too often fall to the Senco to sort out? Why is that not the responsibility of the English lead? Why is it that the children who need it most have their management of learning outsourced to someone who might not be a literacy expert?

“The schools that make this work do so not by throwing potloads of money at it - they are making it a school-improvement priority.”

Tackling learning gaps

What does this look like in practice? Many schools have already started provision to address pupils’ learning gaps. For example, at Bemrose School in Derby, which has a high disadvantaged catchment, there have been a series of Saturday morning sessions since January for Year 9, 10 and 11 students to work on maths, English and science. Thirty students attend each session in person with 50 more taking part online. Two teachers from the school lead the sessions, along with four private tutors, funded by the National Tutoring Programme (NTP). A member of staff trained in wellbeing and safeguarding is also available for children who may need additional emotional support.

“In November, when it was first proposed [by my deputies], I was quite sceptical,” says executive headteacher Neil Wilkinson. “I said we needed to trial this first because we’re investing tens of thousands of pounds into it. But I’ve come in for the sessions and I’ve been amazed at how happy the kids are to come to school on Saturday, whether online or physically coming into school.”

The sessions are scheduled to run for 15 weeks initially and £20,000 has been allocated to fund them. It’s not an entirely new approach for the school, Wilkinson explains: for four years, it has been offering “period six” - an additional lesson at the end of the day for students in Years 7 to 11. But he stresses that while this is the right approach for his school, it might not be for others.

“It works in our context,” he says. “That might not work somewhere else. You’ve got to do it at the right pace at the right time. If it weren’t for the National Tutoring Programme and that capacity there, I would have some reservations. I couldn’t make staff come in on a Saturday. At the moment, it’s voluntary, and we pay them. But I’m talking to the University of Derby about the possibility of finding tutors there, trying to futureproof the programme.”

Tutoring is an interesting part of the catch-up narrative: it has been the approach favoured by the government for addressing any need for additional teaching (through the NTP), and it takes a prominent place in the catch-up package, with £200 million earmarked for expansion of the NTP and 16-19 Tuition Fund. Some teachers have been sceptical on social media about the effectiveness of tutoring as a mass solution, but the efficacy of one-to-one and small-group tuition on improving learning outcomes has been proven, says Francis (who helped develop the NTP), with the EEF’s teaching and learning toolkit labelling both approaches as “effective”. That said, she adds, there are still many other evidence-informed approaches that have been proven to improve learning.

Francis offers the example of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme, which gives Reception children with poor spoken skills three-to-five weekly sessions designed to improve listening, narrative and vocabulary. The results are clear: four months’ extra progress in language skills compared with children who receive standard provision. The intervention will now be rolled out to state-funded primary schools, funded through the tutoring allocation of the Covid-19 catch-up fund.

It is schemes such as this that demonstrate schools don’t have to feel alone in their efforts to support pupils; the support is out there, Francis stresses.

“We have the information to direct an evidence-informed approach to learning loss,” she states. “Our pupil-premium guide [designed to support schools in spending their pupil premium to maximise the benefits for students] is a very useful reflection point for teachers and senior leaders. It shows how the evidence suggests that supporting quality teaching is going to be the most effective resource to support pupils and particularly the most disadvantaged. It’s maybe a bit less catchy as a government programme to direct money at, but in terms of what the evidence says will be most impactful, providing that ongoing CPD to support teachers is a very legitimate way to be spending at this time.”

And there are other “valid ways to drive resource” to bear in mind, Francis continues: “Another is around supporting readiness to learn. That might be engagement with parents or behaviour-management strategies and so forth. And then, of course, wellbeing strategies, which are doubly important at present.”

Likewise, she says, the evidence is clear on what doesn’t work. The idea of repeating a year has been mooted in some quarters, but the research says it is “poor practice” and “not effective in terms of impact”.

“Anything that seems to be a penalty for students is not to be welcomed, particularly given the really logistically difficult and long, knock-on effects on the system that repeating years would have,” she argues.

The point about students feeling penalised for something completely out of their control is an important one: in the rush to catch up, we risk forgetting what it feels like to be a pupil in the system. For all of the potential interventions, it is crucial to pause and consider how your plans will be seen through their eyes: what message does the language you use convey; how far is socialisation being sacrificed; and how intense is the experience of their day?

The key thing to remember, says Francis, is that this is not going to be a sprint. If we rush it, we will get it wrong. We need to look at the bigger picture, bringing in ways to address the knock-on effects of the pandemic in the years, even decades, to come, rather than trying to fix it all at once, she stresses.

“As well as these questions about diagnosis and remedy, we’re going to need to think about broader system-level things like flexible admissions and flexible ways for students to recover learning if it becomes evident later in life that there is a chunk that has been missed and is at risk of hindering them,” Francis reflects. “We need ways that people will be able to flexibly access those opportunities.”

Cook adds that, as part of this effort, it is paramount to place trust in school leaders and teachers. It is they who appreciate the challenges best, they who understand the most effective solutions and they who are best placed to switch the focus from short-term catch up to long-term recovery.

“Any catch-up provision should be continually evaluated and the simplest way of doing this is just to ask teachers whether it is helping,” he says. “What I have seen from school leaders is that they are probably best placed to diagnose this issue. The government needs to trust leaders in terms of how they help their pupils.”

Zofia Niemtus is interim deputy commissioning editor for Tes

This article originally appeared in the 5 March 2021 issue under the headline “Facing a catch-’21 situation”