Look around most public places today and you’d think that we had well and truly come out the other side of the coronavirus pandemic. Masks are now scarce, social distancing almost non-existent. But, reading emails from school leaders this week, it’s hard for me to agree that the pandemic is anywhere near over.

Some schools have reported higher numbers of Covid cases than at any point during the past 18 months. For many, normality is still a long way off. For this reason, all the talk of “Covid recovery” has started to leave me cold.

Another reason is that when policymakers talk about “recovery”, what they are really talking about is “learning loss”. When devising recovery strategies for schools, they have drawn primarily on research about academic achievement determined by pupils being in school.

But much of the research they are basing decisions on is far from conclusive. For example, the Education Endowment Foundation published a rapid evidence assessment of the impact of school closures on the attainment gap in June 2020. This noted that, while the median estimate for how far the gap might widen between disadvantaged children and their peers was 36 per cent, there was a high level of uncertainty within this. Estimates between studies varied from as low as 11 per cent to as high as 75 per cent. This is not a hugely actionable data point.

There has also been an emphasis on one-size-fits-all solutions: tutoring, for example. Are these centralised responses to what has been such a variable experience at all useful?

A more valuable approach might be the one taken by researchers Sinéad Harmey and Gemma Moss in their review of learning disruption (September 2021). This study takes into account the non-uniform conditions of the pandemic. In Leicester, for example, the lockdowns were significantly longer than in other parts of the country. We know, therefore, that vulnerable children living there suffered far more disruption than pupils in some other areas.

One of the findings highlights the need to adapt the curriculum to better support individual children’s needs. For example, the authors recommend using literacy lessons to support children to tell their stories of the pandemic, and to express their thoughts and feelings. Contextual knowledge - knowledge of the school community and how to leverage a curriculum to facilitate a return to positive educational experiences - is important here.

Running alongside this is the need to provide school leaders with the necessary resources to support their own, their employees’ and children’s mental health. Many school leaders would agree that these factors are important but they currently don’t have the flexibility to make the necessary adaptations to what and how they teach, as a result of the restrictions imposed by the ever-present threat of inspection.

This isn’t good enough. What we really need is more autonomy for school leaders to use funds as they see fit. They have contextual knowledge and know their communities best. We need a shift in focus: from learning loss to learning disruption.

Recovery has to move beyond the inane calculation of “gaps” to instead capture the lived experiences of the past few months, upon which teachers, parents, schools and their communities can build.

Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders

This article originally appeared in the 15 October 2021 issue under the headline “Mind the ‘gap’ trap”