The damage that Covid has done to Scottish schools’ efforts to close the attainment gap has been revealed in a new report based on a survey of headteachers.
Almost every head involved believes the pandemic has worsened pupil mental health difficulties, and the most deprived pupils are seen to have suffered most as a result of lockdowns.
The report also shows that the pandemic made schools shift priorities in key areas and led to some changes for the better around digital learning and parental engagement.
The Scottish government report, Attainment Scotland Fund Evaluation - Headteacher Survey: 2021 Report, is based on a 2020-21 survey of heads at schools that receive support from the Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF), which supports the Scottish Attainment Challenge. There was a 25 per cent response rate - considerably higher than for last year’s survey - with 597 responses in total.
The most common of the new challenges to closing the disadvantage-related attainment gap that lockdown threw up was an increase in pupils and their families “in need of support with mental health and emotional wellbeing”. Some 99 per cent of heads felt this had become more common since school buildings were closed, and 78 per cent said it had become “much more’ common”.
Covid hindered schools’ efforts to close the attainment gap
A number of heads said they had found the second round of closures harder than the first and reported “a more significant adverse impact on pupil wellbeing”.
The lack of face-to-face contact from January to March 2021 was among the most commonly cited difficulties. This was “a particular issue for the most vulnerable families - including those in the most deprived areas and those hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic”.
As the report baldly puts it: ”The most deprived learners suffered most as a result of lockdown.”
One head said: “Not having daily in-person contact with school meant that they have fallen further behind their more affluent peers who engaged much better with online learning...This will have a lasting impact on this cohort and we will be dealing with this for years.”
Pupil attendance and anxiety around returning to school after lockdowns were “a major challenge for some schools”, and were linked by heads to “a loss of resilience amongst pupils and families”.
A headteacher in one urban school said: “The escalation in distressed behaviours and levels of anxiety has been very clear. Mental health has been a real issue for a lot of our parents and children, as [has] anxiety around food poverty and the cost of the school day. All of this needs to be addressed before we have children feeling safe, and in a place where they can engage in learning.”
Most schools (83 per cent) changed their 2020-21 approach to pupil equity compared with the previous school year, putting more focus on mental health, offering more support for remote learning and concentrating more on staffing and staff skills.
There was a ”significant increase” in heads citing staffing problems as a major headache. The greater flexibility in how schools were allowed to use ASF funds, introduced as a response to Covid, was most commonly used to increase school staffing capacity.
One head in a small town said: “There has not been a day when we have not had to amend our staffing due to self-isolating, awaiting PCR results, impact of Covid-19 upon childcare and caring commitments.”
Getting enough teachers into the school had been “a huge pressure”, and the head added: “We have worked incredibly hard to ensure continuity of learning and relationships for our children - but this has been a tremendous cost to the wellbeing of staff in terms of lack of continuity, taking on additional needs and the uncertainty of what the following day may bring.”
Another head, in an urban area, said: “All our [Pupil Equity Fund allocation] has been spent on staffing. This has allowed us to deliver additional support for those pupils who are most in need.”
But, as a result of controversial changes to how Scottish Attainment Challenge money is allocated, the school is losing this funding and ”there will be no way we can keep this [staffing] commitment in place and it is likely we will need to move to a more generic universal support model”, added the head.
Some 95 per cent of heads said they felt that the Covid closures of school buildings had had an impact on their progress in closing the attainment gap, including 54 per cent who said it had a “significant impact”.
However, 87 per cent of survey respondents had seen improvement in closing the attainment gap as a result of ASF-supported approaches, similar to previous surveys, and 94 per cent expected to see further improvement in closing the gap over the next few years.
The report notes: “While this is a positive finding, it is notable that views expressed through the survey are not wholly consistent with published attainment data. For example, the latest Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Level data shows a reduction in the proportion of primary school pupils achieving expected CfE levels in literacy and numeracy over the Covid-19 pandemic period (between 2018-19 and 2020-21).”
There were also some reports that schools’ links with families and expertise with digital technology had improved during Covid.
One head in a rural area said: “Communication with parents is more continuous through [digital platforms]....Online parent meetings are more regular, shorter and more productive. Parents’ skills in IT have developed to enable them to engage with school.”
Education secretary Shirley Anne Somerville said: “It’s encouraging that our headteachers are continuing to report progress towards tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, despite the impact of the pandemic.
“We know the disruption caused by Covid-19 has presented serious challenges for learning and teaching in Scotland, as it has around the world. But the response of schools and local authorities in adapting to this, supported by Attainment Scotland funding, has been a testament to the resilience of Scottish education.”
She added: “Progress was being made in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap before the pandemic and we now need to increase the speed and scale of this.
“That is why one of our top priorities is to accelerate both recovery and progress in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, supported by a record £1 billion investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge over the course of this Parliament.”
