Primary multi-academy trust leaders, heads and education experts have warned that the race to recover lost learning and development among younger pupils after the Covid pandemic is a “ticking time bomb”.
One primary MAT leader told Tes that supporting current primary pupils to reach key developmental goals is like “building on quicksand” due to disruption to foundation years, with some seeing standards in areas such as phonics falling even lower for current cohorts than last year’s.
It comes after senior strategic government adviser Tim Oates told Tes that the government had acknowledged that catch-up efforts did not reach all those who needed it, and that evidence shows the “severe problems of child development, equity and attainment which were caused by the pandemic are still with us, not behind us”, especially in the primary and early years.
Primary leaders and experts spoke to Tes after Mr Oates warned that the rhetoric of “back to normal” in messaging from both government and society risked undermining efforts to support Covid recovery in schools and called for a new “national action plan”.
Do we need a national catch-up plan?
While Jamie Barry, headteacher at Yew Tree Primary School in Walsall, believes that some “national attention” needs to be given to the problem, he told Tes he is frustrated that the government has set up schemes such as the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) “without taking into account anything that schools want or need”.
Instead, he claims that what is needed is “quite bespoke and individual to the areas that we serve”.
Asked what the result would be if there isn’t a change in the way schools can use funding to target support, Mr Barry said it’s “like a ticking time bomb” in terms of potentially lower attainment as pupils progress.
Rachael Howell, CEO of the Stour Academy Trust, which has eight primary schools in Kent, told Tes her trust is seeing problems with communication and language development “which is directly impacting our phonics and reading” development with pupils.
While the focus of Ms Howell’s trust in its earlier approaches to catch-up was Year 6, she explained that it has “now completely flipped that” to focus on the early years.
She added that the phonics results in some schools in her trust this year are lower than last year’s, warning that if lost learning in the early years is not addressed, the impact will be a fall in children’s outcomes and a rising number of exclusions.
Ms Howell added: “The problem we’re seeing in Year 1 and Year 2 is a lack of that personal, social, emotional development, and communication and language.
“This is coming forward as a bigger issue than we had maybe foreseen in younger children.
“You’ve got to think of them as the foundations and in some of these children, it’s a bit like building on quicksand. If they haven’t got those prime areas fully developed, everything else is harder to move forward with.”
Ms Howell’s comments come after a survey earlier this year revealed that almost half of pupils in Reception were not developmentally ready for school when they began.
Claire Heald, director of education at AET, one of the largest academies trusts in the country, said that in some areas, children in Key Stage 2 “really are catching up”, but the reality is that “some tricky gaps persist”.
“Maths, for instance is an area where catch-up has been more superficial so far with children struggling more with things like problem solving. Unsurprisingly, there are challenges with children’s social and emotional wellbeing, which is amplified by the increasing difficulties in accessing external support due to over-stretched services.
“Physical development is another area of concern - especially for children in reception, for example we’re seeing continued issues with pen grip, whilst for the older children, writing stamina is still difficult for many.
“But it’s the wider social impacts that are most concerning - which as we know, has led to a significant increase in mental health challenges and, in effect, has eroded the social contract on coming into school, causing an attendance crunch that will take time to unpick and rebuild.”
Primary attainment intervention
Experts have voiced concern that the current measures to tackle the impact of Covid have not been effective enough, and more specific interventions for the challenges need to be rolled out.
Natalie Perera, CEO of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), told Tes that a “sustainable solution” is needed that will tackle both the lost learning “challenges” and the “entrenched problems that schools are facing, many of which were present before Covid”.
“We need a longer-term approach to funding that provides and targets resources to the pupils that need it most,” she said.
Meanwhile, Josh Hillman, director of education at the Nuffield Foundation, said he would like to see “greater attention” given to key stage 1 “with a particular focus on early language development”.
Dame Alison Peacock, CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching, warned that we will end up with “a generation of young people who don’t believe in learning because they feel it’s not addressing their needs” if the consequences of the pandemic on lost learning and wider societal problems aren’t tackled in primary years as a priority.
And John Halliwell, executive director of primary at STEP Academy Trust, said he thought the tools for tackling learning loss were outdated. He said that Ofsted and the Department for Education asked many schools during the pandemic what the impact of it had been so far, but he thought that the information was gathered “far too early to inform policy”.
How should funding work?
While most primary school leaders and experts agree that government funding for schools should be increased, there are disparities in how it should be allocated.
Mr Barry would like to see “a significant increase” for both catch-up and support for special educational needs and disabilities.
New government figures published earlier this month revealed that more than 1.5 million pupils in England are now identified as having SEND.
Rather than put a figure on it, Mr Barry would like to see the government “releasing more of the funds in an unrestricted way to schools”.
With the extra money, Mr Barry said he could employ some additional teaching assistants that could then assist pupils with “focused targeted work”.
Antonia Spinks, co-CEO and director of education at Pioneer Educational Trust, said the trust had noticed more pupils with SEND arriving at the school and had more pupils with education, health and care plans joining the trust.
And Stour Academy Trust’s Rachael Howell said that, in one of her trust’s most deprived schools, the number of children in Reception on the SEND register for communication and language difficulties had doubled since before the pandemic.
Ms Howell also wants the government to fund services in schools to help them deal with the increase in pupils with SEND.
Meanwhile, Lorna Hamilton, education director at The Primary First Trust, told Tes she wants to see primary funding matched to secondary to “really improve” provision in her schools.
And Nuffield’s Hillman said he wants to see ring-fenced funding and for the government to be “a bit more prescriptive about running programmes or using resources”.
He said amid the challenges faced by schools with teacher recruitment, there is a “danger that just either telling schools to do something within their existing resource or just giving them a general increase in resource” could get lost.
Mr Barry added that he is worried that the government isn’t “seeing the bigger picture”.
He explained that there was “so much focus” on academic catch-up at the moment, but “not enough focus on the mental health impact of Covid”.
Earlier this year, leaders warned that schools are being left to deal with a “tsunami of pressures” hitting pupil wellbeing, with children’s mental health struggling to recover post-pandemic.
Mr Barry said he would like to see more support for mental health services in schools.
He added that while the government had given schools money for senior mental health leads, it felt like “a drop in the ocean” and “like we’re fanning flames”.
A DfE spokesperson said: “With thanks to the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check and the English Hubs Programme, we have given pupils across the country a solid foundation in reading.
“And despite the impact of the pandemic, England came fourth out of 43 countries that tested children of the same age in the Pirls international survey of the reading ability of 9- and 10-year-olds.
“We have invested £5 billion into education recovery initiatives to support children to catch up, including through the National Tutoring Programme. On top of this, 90,000 children across two-thirds of primary schools are also benefiting from the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme.”
