The Department for Education has been criticised for having “no plan” for the pandemic and for being “resistant” to learning lessons from its initial response.
A report published today by the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says that when schools were closed to most pupils, an “unprepared” DfE “set no standards for in-school or remote learning during the rest of the school year”, meaning that “children had very unequal experiences”.
The MPs also describe the department as being “surprisingly resistant to the idea of conducting a proper lessons-learned exercise on its early response to the pandemic”.
Catch-up tsar: Extended school day should be compulsory
Covid recovery: Asking teachers to do more has a price
Background: Sir Kevan Collins wants teachers to increase learning time
The report adds that the DfE should carry out a “systematic lessons-learned exercise” to evaluate its response to the pandemic.
The MPs note the DfE has said it wants to wait and consider lessons jointly with other government departments, but that “in our view, by taking this approach, the department risks learning lessons too late to improve how it supports the education system in the event of further disruption”.
Covid catch-up: DfE ‘needs to learn lessons quickly’
Committee chairwoman Meg Hillier said the department’s apparent lack of interest in learning from the past shows “little determination” to ensure that its catch-up offer is “sufficient” to undo the damage caused by the pandemic.
The PAC report also highlights evidence that the targeted elements of the government’s £1.7 billion catch-up programme to make up for lost learning may not be reaching the most disadvantaged pupils.
The DfE has “worthy aspirations but little specific detail” about how it will “build the school system back better” - including how it will secure best value from the £400 million it has spent on IT equipment to support learning, it says.
The PAC says the DfE has “no vision for building on the investment it has made in IT equipment for vulnerable and disadvantaged children” and that it needs to set out a plan to ensure all disadvantaged pupils can access IT at home.
The report also recommends that the DfE works with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to “understand why the number of referrals to children’s social care services remains below expected levels”, noting that “only a small minority of vulnerable children attended school in the early stages of the pandemic, increasing the risk of hidden harm”.
It points out that the disruptions of the pandemic had a “particularly detrimental” impact on pupils with SEND, and that the DfE needs to work with the Department of Health and Social Care “to help children with SEND recover from the damage caused during the pandemic”.
And it criticises the DfE for not setting out how it will judge the effectiveness of its catch-up programme.
The PAC has called on the DfE to write to it to set out “clear metrics” for monitoring the effectiveness of catch-up.
On the National Tutoring Programme, it says that the DfE “should set out how it intends to gain assurance on the quantity and quality of tutoring and mentoring provided [under the NTP],” adding that it should particularly focus its response on how it intends the NTP to cover areas of low educational achievement.
Ms Hillier said: “The pandemic has further exposed a very ugly truth about the children living in poverty and disadvantage who have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic.
“Online learning was inaccessible to many children even in later lockdowns and there is no commitment to ongoing additional funding for IT. Schools will be expected to fund laptops out of their existing, and already squeezed, budgets.
“The committee was concerned that DfE appears uninterested in learning lessons from earlier in the pandemic, preferring to wait until the public enquiry, which won’t report for years. It shows little energy and determination to ensure that its ‘catch-up’ offer is sufficient to undo the damage of the past 14 months.”
The DfE has been approached for comment.
Carole Willis, chief executive of the National Foundation for Educational Research, said: “NFER’s early research into the impact of Covid-19 on education showed that, despite the introduction of remote education, teachers estimated that their pupils missed significant learning.
“NFER’s more recent studies have demonstrated that for Year 2 pupils, the scale of that missed learning is an average of two months’ progress, whilst the disadvantage gap in reading and maths is at seven months.”
