At least 1.5 million pupils a week are struggling to engage in learning, according to research carried out by an exam board.
Most classroom teachers (97 per cent) said they had witnessed pupils having difficulty engaging in learning, according to the Pearson School Report published today.
This was particularly pronounced at secondary level, where one in eight teachers felt as many as three-quarters of their students were struggling to engage.
Over the past year, 57 per cent of the teachers responding to Pearson’s survey said they had become increasingly concerned about pupil disengagement.
Combatting pupil disengagement
Asked how pupil disengagement could be combatted, 85 per cent of teachers said additional staff to support pupils would help most.
Meanwhile, 26 per cent also said support staff helped them engage.
However, schools have been facing a teacher shortage crisis across a range of subjects alongside challenges in recruiting and retaining support staff. Tes revealed in March that support staff vacancies have risen by almost 80 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels.
To combat disengagement, teachers also suggested enhanced access to extracurricular activities (47 per cent), additional hands-on learning options (57 per cent), access to diverse resources (46 per cent), increased use of digital devices (39 per cent), and making curriculum content relevant to students’ lives (64 per cent).
More than half (51 per cent) of the 2,005 pupils who were surveyed as part of the report said support from teachers was what most helped them engage with learning over the past year.
Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of pupils surveyed said they sometimes struggled to engage in lessons - and 19 per cent said they struggled “a lot”.
The survey comes as schools continue to face high absence levels since schools were closed during the Covid-19 lockdowns, despite government efforts to tackle the issue.
Teach First CEO Russell Hobby previously told Tes that the pandemic had triggered “a disengagement with school for some”, alongside ongoing illness and increasing mental health concerns.
Sharon Hague, managing director of school assessment at Pearson, said: “What’s clear from the research is that teachers are really rising to the challenge and going the extra mile to help students engage.
“Feedback on solutions being implemented in schools include focusing on and adapting content so that it’s relevant to their students’ lives today, utilising digital tools to record and stream lessons to support different learning styles as well as providing the opportunity for absent students to catch up on missed lessons.”
Teacher Tapp surveyed teachers between March and April this year, with between 6,932 and 10,015 teachers responding. Pupil research was collected by Censuswide in April.
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