The “damaging” legacy from school closures during the pandemic will mean poorer GCSE results for students in England well into the 2030s, researchers warn.
Cohorts of children affected by the Covid-19 pandemic face the “biggest” decline in GCSE outcomes in decades and an “unprecedented” widening of the socio-economic gap, according to a study.
The research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, recommends a series of reforms - including rebalancing the school calendar, which it argues has been “stuck in place since Victorian times”.
It suggests that spreading the school holidays more evenly across the year - by shortening the six-week summer break and lengthening the October half-term to a fortnight - would be a popular policy with parents.
Drop in GCSE results predicted
The report, written by academics at the University of Exeter, the University of Strathclyde and the London School of Economics, analyses how school closures during the pandemic hindered children’s skills at age 5, 11 and 14.
It predicts that fewer than two in five students in England will achieve a grade 5 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs in 2030. Some 45.3 per cent of students in England achieved this benchmark in 2022-23.
The report calls for a number of “low-cost” policies to be introduced - including a national programme of university undergraduate tutors delivering academic and mentoring support to students to help boost their foundational cognitive and socio-emotional skills.
It adds that a “rebalanced school calendar” should be trialled in some areas because families face challenges in the long summer break, including a lack of childcare and “holiday hunger”.
Lee Elliot Major, who is one of the report’s authors and a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said the recommended change to the school calendar would “improve the wellbeing of teachers and pupils by creating more holiday breaks during the gruelling winter term”.
Calls for ‘enrichment guarantee’
The research found that socio-emotional skills - which include the ability to engage in positive social interactions, cooperate with others, show empathy and maintain attention - are “as important as cognitive skills” in achieving good GCSEs and decent wages after school. The report suggests placing greater emphasis on these.
England’s pandemic response was focused on academic catch-up with less emphasis on socio-emotional skills, extracurricular support and wellbeing compared with most other nations, the report concludes.
It calls for an “enrichment guarantee” to be introduced in schools so that all children benefit from wider activities outside of the classroom.
The report also recommends that Ofsted inspections explicitly recognise disadvantage and credit schools for excelling when serving disadvantaged communities.
Researchers developed a model of skills using data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows the lives of around 19,000 children born in the UK at the turn of the century.
The model was applied to later pupil cohorts to estimate how GCSE results will be impacted by disruption from school closures during the pandemic.
The report concludes that boys who were age 5 at the time of Covid school closures are 4.4 percentage points less likely to achieve five good GCSEs, and girls 4.8 percentage points less likely.
‘A devastating warning’
Professor Elliot Major told the PA news agency: “Without a raft of equalising policies, the damaging legacy from Covid school closures will be felt by generations of pupils well into the next decade.
“A particular worry is a group of pupils who are falling significantly behind, likely to be absent from the classroom and to leave school without the basic skills needed to function and flourish in life. The decline in social mobility levels threatens to cast a long shadow over our society.”.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “This important research is a devastating warning that must be heeded by policymakers - educational standards are at risk of going into decline.
“The current government failed to rise to the challenge during and after the pandemic because its investment in education recovery fell woefully short of what was needed.”
As revealed by Tes, the government’s Covid catch-up tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned in June 2021 after ministers rejected the £15 billion plan he said was needed.
The Department for Education said it has made almost £5 billion available since 2020 for education recovery, as well as spending £10 million on behaviour hubs and £9.5 million for schools to train mental health leads.
“We are also supporting disadvantaged pupils through the pupil premium, which is rising to almost £2.9 billion in 2024-25, the highest in cash terms since this funding began,” a spokesperson added.
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