Poorer children 'worst affected by long-term impact' of school closures

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that by February half-term, children across the UK will have lost at least half a year of normal, in-person, schooling, which would increase to two thirds of a year if schools do not reopen as normal until Easter.

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A briefing note published by the think tank states that the normal cost of half a year of schooling comes to around about £30bn across the UK, but, so far, governments across the UK have allocated about £1.5bn towards the cost of catch-up.

“This is highly unlikely to be sufficient to help pupils catch-up or prevent inequalities from widening,” the briefing states.

The briefing highlights a study from the Netherlands, where schools closed for eight weeks last spring, which found that, despite some of the best digital infrastructure in the world for home learning, test scores of Dutch primary school children were significantly lower than previous cohorts.

“The magnitude is almost exactly equivalent to eight weeks of normal educational progress, suggesting little educational progress was made during the period of school closures,” the briefing note states.

“The negative effects are over 50 per cent larger for disadvantaged children.”

The briefing warns that without sufficient catch-up, children will leave school with less knowledge and skills that can be applied in their job or a lower ability to gain further skills. If, on average, the the 8.7 million school children in the UK earn £40,000 less over their lifetime, total lost lifetime earnings would amount to around £350m.

“If by some miracle we managed to mitigate 75 per cent of the long-run effects of learning loss, the total loss would still be nearly £90bn,” the briefing states.

“Getting a precise estimate of the likely long-run economic would be practically impossible, but such illustrations do help show the massive scale of the problem.”

“There are very good reasons to believe that the effects will not be equal across children either. Remote learning has been particularly hard for young children and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parents with higher levels of education are likely to have been better to help their children and, potentially, pay for expensive tutors to help them catch-up.

“There is therefore the clear possibility that the effects of lost learning could be neutralised for those from well-off families and the long-run negative effects could be concentrated amongst those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The net result would be a widening of existing inequalities. These are hard and costly to close once children reach adulthood.”

The briefing calls for “big and radical” ways to increase learning time to be considered, such as extending the school year, lengthening the school day, mass repetition of whole school years or summer schools, adding that while the £250m National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is likely to have positive results, it is “unlikely to be anything like enough to deal with the seismic loss in learning time”.

Luke Sibieta, research fellow at the IFS, who authored the briefing, said: "A loss of over half a year of normal schooling is likely to have far-reaching long-run consequences. We will all be less productive, poorer, have less money to spend on public services, more unequal and we may be less happy and healthy as a result. Standard evidence on the returns to schooling would imply a total loss of £350bn, or £90bn under incredibly optimistic assumptions.

“The inescapable conclusion is that lost learning represents a gigantic long-term risk for future prosperity, the public finances, the future path of inequality and well-being. We therefore need a policy response that is appropriate to the scale of the problem.

“One useful benchmark is the £30bn it normally costs for half a year of schooling in the UK. That doesn't mean we need to spend that much. But is does strongly suggest that the £1.5bn allocated across the UK so far doesn't even start to match the scale of the challenge. A much larger policy response would allow us to consider radical and properly resourced ways to help pupils catch-up."

A DfE spokesperson said: “We will invest a further £300 million in tutoring programmes, building on the existing £1bn Covid Catch Up Fund, but the Prime Minister was clear last week that extended schools closures have had a huge impact on pupils learning, which will take more than a year to make up.

“The government will work with parents, teachers and schools to develop a long-term plan to make sure pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of this parliament.”