The prospects of a “generation of children” could be damaged by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic unless the government takes faster and more effective action, MPs warned today.
The Commons Public Accounts Select Committee said it was alarming that progress made to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers that was undone by the Covid pandemic could now take a decade to restore.
A new report from the public spending watchdog outlines many of the issues now facing the sector, adding that the committee is ”not convinced” that the DfE “fully appreciates the pressures schools are under as they seek to help pupils catch up”.
Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, said that the consequences of a “lost decade” of progress were “immeasurable”, warning of a “slow-motion catastrophe” of the pandemic on children’s education.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the rate of progress in closing the disadvantage gap had already been moving “at a snail’s pace” because of the lack of government strategy and investment.
“We are now further away than ever from solving this problem,” she added.
According to the report, the “disadvantage gap index” at key stage 2 - a metric used to measure the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers - was 3.34 in 2011, and fell steadily to 2.90 in 2018. In 2022, it had risen again to 3.23. A score of 0 indicates no disadvantage gap.
The document also calls upon the DfE to “do more to understand why some schools are not taking part in the National Tutoring Programme” - a central plank of the recovery plan - and to take more effective action to increase participation.
The DfE told the committee that the fact 13 per cent of schools had not taken part in the programme had been the “biggest disappointment” of the recovery programme.
The report also says that a plan to reduce subsidies sharply for the programme from 2023-24 and completely from 2024-25 posed a risk that it would “wither on the vine”.
It recommends that the DfE should “develop a better understanding of why disadvantaged pupils have higher rates of absence” and “take targeted action to reduce absence rates among disadvantaged pupils”.
There is also a call for faster action on SEND. The report calls for the DfE to “get on with” making the necessary improvements recommended in its plan for SEND and alternative provision published in March this year.
It says: “The timetable for implementing the planned changes stretches into 2025 and beyond. Meanwhile, the children affected continue to make their way through the school system, many of them without the support they need.”
The report adds: “Without the Department for Education taking faster and more effective recovery action, the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic will be with us for a long time, damaging the prospects of a generation of children and entrenching disadvantage.”
Growing attainment gap ‘can’t continue’
ASCL’s Julie McCulloch said that the union fully supported the report’s recommendations. She said: “The committee’s assertion that the DfE does not appreciate the pressures facing schools is a damning indictment of the department’s failure to listen to the evidence that ASCL and a host of other organisations have repeatedly set out to ministers and officials in forensic detail.”
She said that Covid recovery plans had to be “underpinned by improved funding to schools and colleges and action to address the worsening problem of teacher shortages”.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said the government was “in denial both about the scale of the problems and the depth of change that our learners need”.
He added: “The growing attainment gap, with all its implications for children’s life chances, can’t be allowed to continue and the government must take immediate action.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, added that the government had “not done enough” to mitigate the impact of the global events on vulnerable children over the past few years.
He added: ”Schools are offering all the help and support they can, but the truth is that the government has not passed on the funding and resources required to make a real difference.
“Tutoring is a good example of this - it’s a scheme that could really help, but schools have found themselves unable to take full advantage of it for their pupils because budgets are so tight, and they are rightly worried about what happens when the subsidy disappears. The public accounts committee is correct when it says the government does not seem to fully grasp the severity of the situation in schools.”
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said the report shared trusts’ concerns that the implementation of the National Tutoring Programme, and in particular the need for schools to match funds, had “severely limited how trusts can use what could be a significant leg-up for children who have fallen behind”.
She added that fixing the disadvantage gap needed a “more co-ordinated approach across government” that recognised the impact of Covid and funding pressures on mental health and other support services.
“Many trusts are stepping in where they can, but with some 4.2 million children living in poverty, the education sector cannot fix these problems alone,” she said.
The DfE has been approached for a comment.
