What does it say about the value of schooling if children can miss several months and not be any worse off? A number of articles in recent days have suggested that the notion of pupils needing to “catch up” on lost learning over the course of the pandemic is too negative and defeatist, and I’ve been confused by the ferocity of resistance to this idea in Scotland in particular.
But to expect schoolchildren to be able to ride out such massive disruptions to their education and face no disadvantage at all is to be pessimistic and fatalistic in a different way, implying that much of school time is effectively wasted. That such a view is being espoused by teachers is extraordinary and somewhat alarming.
To be fair, it is entirely coherent to believe that schooling, in general, is worthwhile and beneficial, but not in the quantities children typically receive. You can certainly have too much of a good thing. To my mind, the debate over learning loss and extending schooling in response largely turns on how close we are to the inflection point where young people lose more than they gain from additional formal education (for example, because they have too little time to relax or play).
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Certainly, prior to the coronavirus crisis, there were those who argued that children should spend less time in school - sometimes in the form of a shorter school day, more often by raising the school starting age. If such views are well-founded, then perhaps we should be less worried about pandemic learning loss. On the other hand, there has for some time been concern that too little school leads to a deterioration in children’s skills and knowledge, especially over the ”summer slide” that can occur over the holidays.
Coronavirus: Should we have longer school days to help pupils catch up?
Either way, the trap we should avoid is simply assuming that the standard school day and year is optimal just because it is what we had before - not least because it has been significantly shaped by factors that have little to do with children’s educational needs.
Instead of asserting, as one recent article does, that “extending the school day will not aid in the ‘catching up’ process”, we should take seriously the evidence that increasing school time has been shown to improve outcomes, especially for disadvantaged students.
It is important not to consider the issue too narrowly: the potential benefits of school extend far beyond the academic, and we should be thinking about whether young people need to “catch up” in their personal and social development as well as literacy and numeracy. It is understandable to be concerned about the impact on mental health and wellbeing of longer schooling, which should be monitored carefully (although a longer school day could also mean more opportunity for schools to address mental health). Teachers struggling under existing workloads have every right to ask about where the resources would come from: how much more would be expected of them as opposed to from extra staff?
Getting the priorities and practicalities right to support children returning to school after the pandemic is a forbidding task. It helps nobody to downplay the scale of the challenge.
Dr Aveek Bhattacharya is chief economist at the Social Market Foundation (SMF), a Westminster-based think tank. He is from Scotland and compared school choice in Scotland and England as part of his PhD. He tweets @aveek18
