“That’s not how Mummy says to do it,” a pupil in the first row interrupts, as you are taking the class through the chunking method for long division.

Once again, you have to stop to explain that although there are several different approaches to division, this is the approach that you will all be practising today. 

“Mummy’s approach isn’t wrong,” you say. “It’s just different.”

As pupils return to school, gaps in their learning are bound to become apparent. While some pupils will have thrived in their remote learning, for others there is simply no substitute for the classroom. And by September, some will have been away from school for more than five months. This is a lot of learning potentially missed. So, what kind of gap should teachers prepare themselves for? 

We spoke to teachers and headteachers in countries where schools have already been back for several weeks, to find out about their experiences. Although direct comparisons are tricky where schools have been closed for less time, their observations give some indication of what the picture could look like here. 

Have pupils ‘lost’ learning as a result of school closures?

“We haven’t noticed anything significant,” says Jude Pentecost, headteacher of Worser Bay School, a primary school in Wellington, New Zealand. Her school was closed for around eight weeks before reopening in the middle of May. 

“Writing has been interesting,” she admits. “It took just that bit longer for some of our children to get back into it. We have also noticed some confusion between what home learning unearthed - ‘new maths’ as opposed to ‘old maths’, for example.

“[Overall, though,] all students are in similar places to where they were before. We are involved in making judgements as to where children sit at present but don’t expect any significant changes.” 

Beitsche Bekius, a humanities teacher at CS Vincent van Gogh, a secondary school in Assen, Netherlands, has had a similar experience. Her school was also closed for around two months.

“I think for two months, it is OK for most students; we work online with teams and most students are doing well,” she says. 

All the students at her school are already taught in sets, Bekius points out, and she has not seen a huge difference in her students’ attainment levels. 

“We do not have our students as mixed as you have in most of your schools. In primary education they are mixed, but in secondary they are selected and placed according to their attainment. So most students in secondary education are more or less at the same level in a group, therefore the differences in catching up are not that big,” she explains.

Linda van Druijten, who leads De Boomhut and OBS De Klaproos, a primary school and special educational needs school in Arnhem, Netherlands, has also noticed little difference in the overall attainment of most students.

“For the middle students and for those students who usually score a bit higher, we see no or very little difference. We see that they have had success with online education,” she says.

“They missed the more social stuff and the lessons which are creative, so it is good that they are back because they missed that. But the mathematics, the reading comprehension, the reading speed is still OK and, for some children, even better.” 

Have some pupils lost more learning than others?

However, while attainment levels remain the same for many, there are some children who have missed out more than others, van Druijten admits.

“I think it is OK to admit that the children who have a less rich environment, where the parents do not speak Dutch as a native language, or they don’t have three computers, a TV and 12 iPads in the house - those children into whom, when we see them at school, we have to put more knowledge and the education has to be more focused - these children score lower. It’s not a surprise that these children will need more help,” she says.

Likewise, Bekius observes that while most students at her school are doing well, the exception to this are those students who are “in a non-stable home situation and have no support from parents”.

“Sadly, they would be less well off in any school situation,” she points out.

Niko Gärtner, headteacher at Kirchwerder Comprehensive school in Hamburg, Germany (where schools were closed from the middle of March until towards the end of May) also sees disparity between his students. 

“It would be foolish to deny that some students managed their home learning better than others, or rather that some parents were more effective substitute teachers than others,” he says. 

“Overall, we are very concerned about rising inequality during the absence of school’s levelling influence.” 

How difficult will it be for pupils to catch up?

Despite where things currently stand, Gärtner believes that students will be able to catch up academically, given the right support.

He argues that, because learning is not linear, there will be plenty of chances for them to pick up on missed subject knowledge further down the line.

“I think the question of ‘lost learning’ is based on a distorted view of education as the teaching of successive content. In this image, the grand book of learning would now be missing a few pages due to the shutdown.

“In reality, we teach content and skills in helical, repetitive patterns. Each teacher begins the school year by stocktaking what base knowledge has survived ‘summer holidays amnesia’, and then continues from that launch pad. 

“Students thus have many opportunities throughout their school career to learn about Pythagoras or verb conjugation. So, yes, they will catch up on content that fell victim to corona,” he explains.

Pentecost takes a similarly pragmatic view. She believes that, with careful planning, schools should be able to get any students who have fallen behind back up to speed without too much difficulty.

“We feel confident that with well-planned responsive programmes, we won’t be playing catch up,” she says. 

“Our expectations as to where we hope to get the children in 2020 remain the same. If we don’t make it, we will look at different aspects of the year and see what is possible, what needs changing, increasing or decreasing. All effort now is going into this review and evaluation.”

Schools, then, are already putting measures in place to help get students back to where they need to be. 

In some countries, this effort will be supported by additional funding. The Dutch government, for example, has already promised to give extra money to schools for this purpose. 

“Our government has invested ‘corona money’ in order to have extra personal coaching and lessons for students who somehow managed to stay behind. This will happen at the start of the new school year,” says Bekius. 

For van Druijten, this funding has been one of the more positive things to come out of the coronavirus crisis.

“Hopefully now, this crisis will have shone a light on the children who already had fewer chances in life and force governments to take action to fund provision that will help to level the playing field and make chances more equal,” she says. 

“Sometimes I think, OK, it is terrible that corona had to be there to open people’s eyes and get some extra money. But at least now we have extra funding.”

What about the social impact of school closures?

So, if general attainment levels remain the same and schools will be able to fill any gaps in subject knowledge relatively easily (providing the necessary funding is made available), does this mean that we don’t really have anything to worry about?

Unfortunately, things are not quite that straightforward. Subject knowledge might be easy to replace, Gärtner points out, but schools provide children with a lot more than just that.

“Lost lesson content is not the big issue here,” he says. “We worry very much about other aspects of regular school provision: how it structures students’ days, makes them get up in the morning, forces them into social interactions, frames their existence (feeling useful, welcome and valued), and enables them to spar with teachers. School as a social (and civilising) space is - or has been - under threat during this pandemic.” 

Making up for the social interaction that children missed out on during the months of isolation is also a major concern for Pentecost. “Our focus on the whole child and social and emotional growth is as important as ever,” she stresses.

So, how worried should we be, overall?

Despite these concerns, most heads are generally optimistic about outcomes for pupils. While the time away from school has brought challenges, it has also brought some welcome surprises. 

For instance, while some students have fallen further behind during lockdown, the time spent learning remotely has been a very positive experience for other students, who perhaps find it difficult to learn in a traditional classroom set-up.

“Some of our students, who had continuously failed to behave or work in pre-corona lessons, have blossomed as home learners,” says Gärtner.

And van Druijten, likewise, believes that there is plenty to feel positive about. She says that while pupils will inevitably need to catch up on some parts of the curriculum, they have had the opportunity to grow as learners in other areas - becoming more independent and more proficient at using technology as a result of their remote learning.  

“Maybe they missed things, but what they learned is very interesting,” she explains. “Children are much more independent because the teacher is not just 50cm away. They are able to do more on their own with their mathematics and stuff. It’s incredible how much they learned. 

“There will be a gap. For everyone. We have the assumption that this gap will be enormous, but I don’t think it is wise to see it from that perspective. Of course we missed stuff. But of course we learned new stuff. My question is: what did they learn? And where should our focus be for the next few months?”