Education Charity Finds that School Closures Hampered Students’ Learning
When it comes to school closures, the Oxford Blavatnik School’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker codes countries on four-point scale from 0 (“no measures”) to 3 (“require closing all levels”). This measure is accompanied by a “flag” indicating whether closures were required in specific regions or the entire country.
Since the start of the pandemic, the UK has spent 253 days with a rating of 3. This means there have been 253 days on which schools at all levels were closed in at least part of the country. The only European country with more days of school closures is Italy. How have such closures affected students’ learning?
I’ve already written about two studies which found sizeable negative effects. One, based on data from the Netherlands, found that students made considerably less progress in 2020 than in each of the three preceding years. Another, based on Brazilian data, found that the change in dropout risk was substantially higher in 2020 than in 2019. But what about the UK?
The Education Endowment Foundation – a charity founded in 2011 – has collated all the best studies on the impact of school closures on students’ learning. As it stands, their list includes six UK studies and seven international studies.
According to the charity, research to date “shows a consistent pattern”. Specifically, students have made “less academic progress” than in previous years, and the attainment gap between more and less advantaged students seems to have grown.
As to the UK itself, “Studies from NFER, Department for Education and GL assessment show a consistent impact of the first national lockdown with pupils making around 2 months less progress than similar pupils in previous years.”
However, this figure may understate learning losses, given that the relevant studies only examined the impact of the first national lockdown. Looking at the Blavatnik School’s database, the UK has spent more than 100 days with a rating of 3 since October of 2020.
Why might the attainment gap between more and less advantaged students have grown while schools were closed? There are a number of possibilities, including differences in parental support, access to technology (e.g., high-speed broadband) and the use of private tuition.
Overall, the studies reviewed by the Education Endowment Foundation call the Government’s policy of school closures into serious question. Although there are plans to extend the school day by 30 minutes as a way of helping pupils catch up, it’s unclear whether this will be enough to correct the learning losses that have already been sustained.
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Wow!!!
Wow!!!! closing schools hampers learning, Wow!!!
I could have told them that for the very reasonable fee of 10p
Thank God for researchers
Pope and Bears anyone?
only bears, the current Pope seems to worship the prophet Marx, rather than Jesus.
In other news, ursine mammals believed to evacuate bowels in forested areas – Pope a christian!!
Boris may understand the species from the Latin but not any biological intestinal function because he doesn’t have a clue about science cause and effect.
I would take issue with your view that the current Pope is a christian.
Really? Who knew?
These think tanks are ridiclously overpaid and over employed!
Anecdote is not the singular of data, but it is a datum point. My teenage daughter’s class was given a set of “distance learning” to do, which we ensured that she did, with our encouragement and support.
When her teachers did finally summon up the courage to do their jobs again, it transpired that none of her classmates had done any of it.
I’ll repeat that for emphasis: none of them had done any of it, in any of her classes. And this is not a bad school in a bad area either, it’s just a normal mix of bennies, working and lower middle class kids.
She was furious that on return to the classroom, they had to go over all of the work that she’d already done. And that this was just shrugged off by the indoctrinators.
I mean, what does it matter? They’re all being given A’s this year just for existing. What a mug she was for actually getting off her phone during her extended holidays and learning stuff: it won’t be reflected in her grades.
Yes but you and your daughter can take comfort in the fact that……. Ooops, no sorry can’t think of anything
Exactly. What was the point of it? With assigned and wildly over-inflated grades, indoctrinators have levelled everyone down and made working pointless. How utterly socialist of them.
“How utterly socialist of them”
What’s your excuse for your poor parrot-style education ?
I can relate to this In our family we’re lucky in that me and the wife are both “High Functioning” ( Masters level eduction etc ) My boys aged 9 and 14 both go to the school that my wife teaches A level at. My boys are both independent critical thinkers who spend a lot of their time being creative and they both get ALL their homework done well in and out of lockdown. And to be honest they learn MOST of their stuff OUTSIDE of school – the way I look at it is school is merely for them to learn how to interact with others and be socialised. ( For instance my hench 14 yr old learned that beating almost every other f***er at arm wrestling in front of 50 other pupils earns you a LOT of respect from the would be bullies – who now keep away !! ) We’ve also had the same experience as you @rogerbord in that my boys and my wife have found that almost no one else has bothered to do ANY work outside of school and so spend all their time “catching up” when back at school. My wife has had… Read more »
Please stop reporting (Lockdown Sceptics) the bloody obvious.
I hope they didn’t waste too much charitable donations researching the bloody obvious
Did we really need a study to figure this one out? Clown world.
Seems government probably did need a study to get them to even consider the damage their policy decisions have done
I think they know, they just don’t care.
I think causing damage is the primary goal of many, if not all, of their covid policies. You’ve got to knock the house down before you can “build it back better”.
I doubt anyone in government considers the damage their policy decisions have done.
Reminds me of the “study” mentioned by Jerm in one of his excellent podcasts (I think he was talking to Nick Hudson) – “Lockdowns lead to social isolation, especially for people who live on their own”.
I agree with all the comments here along the lines of “stating the bleeding obvious”. Not only have these closures and the mostly-poor distance learning substitute affected pupils’ “academic” education and learning, but they have also caused less obvious, but insidious problems and deficiencies in other aspects of education.
I refer to the “socialisation” and human interactions and behaviours which are also an important learning part of any education system. When secondary schools have been open, the twin obscenities of social distancing i.e. inculcating a habit of shunning fellow-humans, and the imposition of masks can only have achieved further harms.
In the near future, there will no doubt be more learned researchers concluding that forms of antisocial behaviour, previously found in a minority of the young, are now more common, and attributable to the lamentable handling of the education system, along with the other repercussions from events outside education, in the home environment.
We have become a nation of infantilised cretins.
The fact that this study was even done will add to those in the general population of ahem “average” intelligence thinking : “Ooh, aren’t those science people clever, look at that clever stuff they’ve researched and found out”
It’s effectively a kind of “Dumbing Down by example” Propaganda, leading the masses to lower their expectations of what they consider to be”The Science” even further.
Spot on.
Infantilised cretins that only listen to and cower at the jackboots of the bid daddy – the government.
Quelle surprise – FFS!
But it’s not the academic learning that’s the main problem – it’s the wider impact on social growth and the induction of fear.
“…there are plans to extend the school day by 30 minutes as a way of helping pupils catch up, it’s unclear whether this will be enough to correct the learning losses that have already been sustained.”
This moronic idea lays bare the impoverished knowledge and thinking by those in charge that has bedeviled education in the past 40 years ever since Baker, that other piece of lard with Starmer hair, started having noddy ideas above his intellect. Education as a process of filling up empty vessels – Grandgrind’s model.
Perhaps we are now seeing the intent and results in the compliance of the younger population to being kicked about as The Mengele Memorial Brigade rises to power.
No. Shit. Sherlock.
In Germany it is practice that teachers recommend pupils repeat the year if they haven’t achieved what is expected. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will be a record year where pupils repeat this year.
In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue…
Actually the sky’s a dull grey here!
Shocked! Shocked I tell ya.
Who on earth could have worked that out? Ferguson and his crappy computer model maybe?!!!!!!!
Not him because the answer is vaguely correct
My 2 year old grandson given 10days isolation punishment from nursery because unknown +ve test in school. Father , an anaesthetist can go to work as can mother, child care by grandmother.! What idiotic non scientific disruption are we permitting? SAGE ,Boris,Hancock and Gove should be subject to civil law for the damage that they are causing to children : and for heaven’s sake stop them from vaccination of the under-12 as an experiment
Unfortunately we are run by psychopaths who have no compassion for anything human. There is a video of Matt Hancock at the WEF boasting of his investment in the largest British genome creating vaccine and he gets clapped. Boris has no intention of standing up for his country, he is no conservative, that’s for sure. Just an opportunist who wanted the top job because of the status. None of his family members have ever considered what real service to their country is. As for Gove…… what can one say. A traitor of the highest order. All the MPs are career politicians created because of the decision by corrupt Civil Servants to align us with a political socialist block. Something many wanted to do since 1920s. Many were close friends with the Brussels set who were related to German politicians through the 1940s. This has been a long time coming and the true conservatives were too forgiving of those who wished to destroy nations. As President Putin replied to a question from a Russian citizen over the stolen election in America. ‘Western politicians are career politicians who care nothing for democratic rule or safety of their people. President Trump was an… Read more »
It’s a constant drip, drip, drip, of demoralisation and fear. We have been under this tyranny since 1975 when we as a free and conservative nation joined a socialist political block. The tyranny has slowly been ramped up as each new threat to the NWO has arisen. First it was Enoch Powell, then UKIP, then Brexit and finally the huge MAGA movement that would have broken the EU completely, created peace in the Middle East, brought Russia back onto the World Stage and the CCP on the back foot. The UK has been so broken by this gaslighting and coping with their Governments hating the people and the history of a Great Island that I do believe we are now walking into a despotism and control far worse than anything Russia, France, Germany or indeed most of the world has lived through. Should the UK sit back and let this happen, as they seem to be doing in every single walk of life, then Democracy and freedom will die worldwide. Following on that will be the total annihilation of anything good and creative. America is fighting this crime towards humanity. The majority of British journalists are not supporting the truth… Read more »
“Education Charity Finds that School Closures Hampered Students’ Learning” this has got to be up there with “Turkeys sell well at Christmas”. Do we actually pay these people to point out ‘the bleeding obvious’? Extraordinary.
The phrase “No shit Sherlock” springs to mind.