There has been a doubling in the proportion of primary school children classed as low attainers in reading, according to a major research report published today.

The report also found that the disadvantage gap in reading and maths has not narrowed among Year 5 pupils since before the pandemic.

The findings have been published in a study carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) for the Education Endowment Foundation.

Researchers assessed the impact of school closures on the attainment and social skills of pupils in Years 4 and 5 in the 2023-24 academic year, who would have been in Reception and Year 1 when the first national lockdown was imposed during the Covid pandemic.

Proportion of Year 5 reading ‘low attainers’ has doubled

The NFER study raises concerns about the 4.23 per cent of Year 5 pupils classed as “low attainers”, in reading, a proportion that has more than doubled since 2017.

Researchers defined low attainers as pupils who do not gain a sufficient number of raw marks to achieve a standardised score of 70.

The proportion of low attainers in Year 4 reading and maths, and in Year 5 maths, was comparable to pre-pandemic figures.

Overall, the difference between the mean scores of pupils in 2023-24 and those from 2017 appears to have closed for Year 4 and Year 5 pupils on average in both reading and maths.

However, the report also warned that a relatively high proportion of Year 4 and 5 pupils were deemed unable to access the curriculum in 2023-24, which it said could be “masking a tail of low attainment”.

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Disadvantage gap remains among Year 5 pupils

The disadvantage gaps for reading in spring 2024 for Year 4 and Year 5 amounted to around seven and six months’ progress respectively, according to the NFER report.

While the disadvantage gap has narrowed for Year 4 pupils since 2021, it has not closed among Year 5 pupils in either reading or maths.

While Year 5 pupils’ reading attainment grew significantly for disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers, it increased at the same rate across both groups, meaning the disadvantage gap has not shrunk since 2021.

There were similar findings in maths, where the disadvantage gap for both Year 4 and 5 pupils was around seven months’ progress in Spring 2024.

The gap had closed since 2021 for Year 4 - but has remained the same in the Year 5 results, according to the report.

The report’s findings are more positive regarding the impact of the Covid pandemic on the cohort as a whole.

Four years on from the first school closures, it says that positive findings - such as the constant improvement of scores from spring 2021 to spring 2024 in reading and maths for Year 4 and Year 5 pupils - suggest that the “strategies that schools have put in place to support recovery are reducing the impact of the disruption to pupils”.

Social maturity not ‘significantly’ affected by Covid

The research also assessed whether the social skills of the pupils in question, who endured lockdowns at the beginning of their formal education, are at or behind expected levels.

The NFER report says it found the social maturity of pupils in 2023-2024 was not significantly different from that expected of children of the same age had the pandemic not happened.

The report warns, however, that there are new areas of difficulty presenting challenges for schools, especially pupil attendance and the availability of appropriate external support.

It adds that policymakers need to ensure “that schools have the appropriate resources to identify not only learning recovery needs, but the wider support that pupils need, including around wellbeing, attendance and behaviour”.

The DfE has been contacted for comment.