Today marks the fifth anniversary of the first Covid lockdown, which saw thousands of children confined to their homes as schools closed around the country.
This experience had a profound effect on the education and development of young people. For those from low-income households, and from the earliest days of the school closure period, the turbulence was particularly acute.
Our polling in April 2020 revealed that 60 per cent of private schools and 37 per cent of schools in the most affluent areas had an online platform to conduct schoolwork. In the most deproved school, it was just 23 per cent.
Many fortunate children already had a computer at home, in a quiet room without distractions, and schools providing them with work. In some cases, live lessons took place from the get-go.
At the other end of the spectrum, too many had no such access, even deep into the pandemic. Many had to complete work on a phone shared between several siblings, in overcrowded housing, without access to a quiet space to work.
Following the second lockdown in 2021, alongside colleagues at UCL’s centre for education policy and equalising opportunities (CEPEO) and its centre for longitudinal studies, we launched a major Covid social mobility and opportunities study (COSMO).
We investigated the impact of the pandemic on 13,000 young people across England who were 14 to 15 years old in 2020.
The majority of students in this study said their academic progress had suffered and their future plans had changed due to the pandemic. The study has also shown that poor mental health among 16- to 17-year-olds had increased by more than one-quarter since 2017.
Challenges in learning at home resulted in many disadvantaged young people falling behind. The COSMO study found that 53 per cent of those who lacked a device at the beginning of the pandemic had still not received one by the end of the second period of school closures.
Access to devices was crucial. Those without a device worked on average just eight hours a week during the first lockdown, those with just a mobile phone, 10 hours and those with a laptop or tablet, 14 hours.
We can’t turn back the clock, but it’s not too late to the narrow the gap
We also saw variation in access to catch-up activities when pupils could return to school. Seven per cent of those at state schools reported they had fallen behind their classmates – more than double the figure for independent school students.
Research from others has found that, from negative social and behavioural issues linked to isolation experienced in lockdowns to a rise in speech and language difficulties among new school pupils, the pandemic’s impact has lingered for many year groups.
But perhaps one of the most concerning impacts for the long-term prospects of the young people who grew up during the pandemic is the effect on attainment.
Prior to 2020, the gap between the disadvantages students and their peers had been narrowing, albeit slowly. Covid reversed that trend, wiping out a decade’s worth of progress when exams returned fully in 2022.
In 2024, just 26 per cent of disadvantaged pupils achieved grades of 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs. This is nearly half of the proportion of non-disadvantaged pupils (53 per cent) who received those grades. Today, the gap is 27 percentage points. In 2018/19, it was 25.
The attainment gap is the result of an often complex combination of inter-related factors and has been stubbornly wide over time, but the pandemic showed the vital role of schools as a leveller. Pupils were out of classrooms for long periods and gaps widened as a consequence.
Pupils’ exam results have a lifelong impact. Under-performing your potential in GCSEs can make a big difference to the academic and professional pathways open to you thereafter.
We can’t turn back the clock and undo the impact of school closures on a generation of young people. But it’s not too late to the narrow the attainment gap.
Ultimately, this hinges greatly on tackling socio-economic deprivation and child poverty. But without concerted action in schools, gaps in life chances would probably be even wider.
School funding allocations should be rebalanced back towards schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.
Pupil premium funding should also be restored to pre-pandemic levels, as rampant inflation has reduced its impact in real terms.
It should also be extended to those aged 16 to19. Disadvantage doesn’t end at 16, and neither should dedicated funding.
Successful initiatives in response to the pandemic, such as the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), should also be restored. The NTP significantly levelled access to tutoring, with 35 per cent of working-class Year 11 students receiving private or school-based tutoring in 2023, compared to 36 per cent of students from professional homes.
Given that tutoring is a well-evidenced and highly effective intervention to boost learning, bringing back the NTP seems like a no-brainer.
These priorities are set out in Sutton Trust’s ten-point plan to close the gap alongside others including tackling school absences, expanding free school meal eligibility and dealing with the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.
If there’s one lesson to be learned from the Covid experience, it’s that we need far better preparation for future pandemics – especially when it comes to ensuring all young people, regardless of their background, are able to learn if school closures are ever necessary again.
But in the ongoing aftermath of the last lockdowns, closing the attainment gap must be an urgent national mission.
