Lockdown’s Impact on Children to Last Well into 2030s, Says LSE Report

Children who started school in the early days of the pandemic will have worse exam results well into the next decade, a new report from the London School of Economics and two other universities has found. The Spectator‘s Michael Simmons has more.

Children who started school in the early days of the pandemic will have worse exam results well into the next decade. That’s according to a study released [Wednesday] morning by the London School of Economics, the University of Exeter and the University of Strathclyde. Researchers predict that 60% of pupils will achieve worse than a grade five in their English and Maths GSCEs in 2030, considerably more than the numbers achieving poor marks today.

The study, which looked at the effect of school closures on childhood development, is the first to look at both ‘cognitive’ skills as well as ‘socio-emotional’ skills, finding the latter to be just as important. …

The results are hardly surprising given the persistent absence problems lockdowns left in their wake. Last spring, 140,000 children in England missed half or more of the school days they should have attended. Research by the Children’s Commissioner, published last year, found that only 5% of these ‘severely absent’ kids go on to achieve five GCSEs. …

Today’s study goes further, predicting poor exam performance to last “well into the 2030s”. It also found that while most children experienced up to six months of lost learning on average, for poorer children an extra two months were lost. This attendance and attainment gap was already there, but Covid and lockdowns made it worse.

Worth reading in full.

The predictions about how children will fare in 10 years time are guesses of course – though guesses based on the measurable and very real harms of lockdown.

Children bore a terrible burden for the misguided efforts of adults to protect themselves from a virus that was scarcely dangerous to them, and almost completely harmless to the children themselves. Far more children will have died of the consequences of lockdown such as abuse and neglect, plummeting mental health and the immunity debt that was responsible for the spike in child RSV, hepatitis and Strep A among other things. The consequences for their learning and life prospects will be with them for decades to come.

How long until politicians start taking the responsible line on this and make the pledge we want to hear: “Never again”?