The National Audit Office has released a report which assesses the Department for Education’s actions in the early response to the Coronavirus pandemic. The report looks at the impact from the initial school closures from March-July 2020. The report covers: the Department’s overall response to the pandemic; the support provided for children’s learning, both in school and remotely; and the impact of disrupted schooling on children.
Impact of School Closures
The report looks at the long term impact of the school closures along with the Department for Education’s catch-up plan. The report rightly acknowledges Amanda Spielman’s point that there was not just a term’s worth of loss in education but also that children lost their “consolidation” of education. This concluded that the learning loss would be “significant” and result in widening attainment gaps. In reports of inspections carried out late in 2020, Ofsted found that primary school leaders “most commonly identified that pupils had lost some of their knowledge and skills in reading” with younger primary pupils being the worst affected. The report also found that there were concerns surrounding maths and literacy skills in secondary schools.
In research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in July 2020 it was found that 98% of teachers considered their pupils were behind in comparison to previous years. On average, teachers estimated their pupils to be three months behind. It is clear that the pandemic is not simply creating new challenges, but exacerbating pre-existing ones, especially in the North East where there was a loss of 2.3 months of progress in reading respectively, compared with 1.3 in the East of England and in the North West, and 1.2 in the South East.
The expectation in early assessments was that disadvantaged children have lost out disproportionately from the disruption to schooling. In its July 2020 survey, NFER found that teachers were worried that the “learning gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers had widened since the previous year” finding that children in schools where there are higher levels of disadvantage experienced more severe reading loss.
Remote Learning
As many school leaders will know, a particular and significant challenge which the pandemic created was the requirement to move to remote learning for the majority of children. Alongside this, there was initially scant support and guidance from the Government on the provision of this.
As a response, the Department committed to providing laptops, tablets and 4G routers to those students who were in need of support. Unfortunately the response and rollout was slow, with the delivery of equipment not coming until the end of June. By the last full week of term, starting on 13 July, the Department had only delivered 212,900 laptops and tablets, and 49,700 routers, which contributed to a learning loss for those who needed the most support.
The implications for this on North East pupils would be huge as a fifth of school leaders in the region highlighted that 30% or more of their students did not have access to devices or the internet. Whilst Government support arguably failed those who were most disadvantaged, North East schools stepped into the breach and went above and beyond to ensure that every child was supported as adequately as possible, providing resources that could be accessed by all, as well as basic amenities such as pens, pencils and paper for those students most in need.
Alongside the provision of online equipment the DfE provided £500,000 in order to fund the national online resource, Oak National Academy. The launch for this was late April before the DfE decided to give a further £4.3 million in order to expand their resources over the 2020/21 academic year. The project displayed a fair daily usage of 220,000 people over the course of three months (April-July) with the response being that this was a helpful, high quality resource. The extent to which this has continued to be used as schools developed their own online offer however is unclear.
The evidence for how long children spent on remote learning is inconsistent as reports range from five hours a day to less than two hours a day. Findings showed that children from higher-income families spent around 30% more time on remote learning than children from lower-income families with children from disadvantaged families having less access to study space, IT equipment, and a lack of motivation. Projections were that, if normal schooling did not return until September and these rates of remote learning continued, the gap would represent 15 full school days. Even though schools opened in September it was clear that there was still disruption to learning as ‘bubbles’ burst and children found themselves out of school isolating for extended periods, as well as suffering more disruption through the second lockdown in January which further exacerbated this issue.
National Tutoring Programme
In July, the Department launched the National Tutoring programme, partnering with external organisations to run the NTP tuition partners and academic mentors schemes. The EEF was named as tuition partner with Teach First providing the academic mentors.
This programme has not seen the success which the DfE had initially expected, with both the tuition partners and academic mentors schemes falling short of the expected targets which were initially laid out. The tuition partners scheme aimed to support at least 200,000 children on it’s launch, falling 75,000 pupils short of this target. It was found this month that the National Tutoring Programme reported low engagement from North East schools, reaching less than 60% of it’s target in the region – the lowest percentage of any region. While reasons for this were varied, many school leaders have stated that the scheme is not appropriate for their school’s context, preferring to support students with existing staff and focus on emotional and social recovery first before assessing students and moving to more academic support.
Additionally, 600 schools who applied to the scheme have been left without mentors. The shortage of available mentors is a further reason behind low engagement for North East schools.
Interestingly, the report also found that the scheme may fail to reach the most disadvantaged children. The NTP has faced some challenges as some tutoring and mentoring originally intended to be delivered face-to-face has had to be adapted so that it can be provided remotely. This is a challenge which school leaders will all be familiar with, but due to challenges in accessing devices and the internet, amongst other concerns, it is likely to result in lower engagement, especially for the children who need it most.
Costs
Throughout the pandemic, a major challenge schools have faced is the financial cost of implementing safety measures, PPE, adapting classrooms, providing handwashing and sanitiser and extra cleaning, amongst others; as well as the additional costs of supply to deal with staff absences caused by Covid-19. The DfE has not committed to supporting schools with these costs in general but has made available funding for ‘exceptional costs’ subject to strict criteria.
The Department paid schools 73% of the £181 million they had claimed for exceptional costs. The funding was only available to schools who could not meet their additional costs from existing resources, or could do so only by drawing on reserves and potentially undermining their long-term financial sustainability. The knock-on effect of this is that schools which had built up reserves with the intention to invest on school improvements may now lose this opportunity.
For the 2019/20 summer term, the Department funded schools for three categories of exceptional costs: providing free school meals; opening school premises during the Easter and summer half-term holidays; and additional cleaning due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Within the £181 million total, schools made £42 million of claims outside these categories. The funding which was set out was insufficient and unsustainable for schools leaving them disadvantaged financially.
For North East schools the lack of financial support could have a lasting negative impact. After years of spending cuts on education, 2019’s announced funding increases would have only brought per pupil spending back to the same level as 2010. However, as expenditures ballooned due to the extra measures which were required in order to make schools safe for opening, school budgets are once again suffering. Now as schools need to focus on supporting student emotional and social wellbeing, money which could have been spent on enhancing the curriculum, extra curricular activities, school improvement and supporting pupil outcomes is no longer available.
NAO’s Conclusion and Recommendations
The NAO acknowledges that the Government faced an unprecedented challenge but that ‘aspects of its response, however, could have been done better or more quickly, and therefore been more effective in mitigating the learning pupils lost as a result of the disruption.’ Schools North East has repeatedly called for swift and clear decision making. However, the suggestion that expectations for in-school and remote learning should have been set out last Spring is unrealistic and would have placed unhelpful pressure on schools which were acting in an emergency capacity.
The NAO’s recommendation that ‘the Department now takes swift and effective action, including to learn wider lessons from its COVID-19 response,’ with a strong focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged students is welcome. However, this must be done in conversation with those at the chalkface. Any monitoring to track the longer term impact of Covid-19 or the success of ‘catch up’ interventions must take into account the views of the profession on what is useful to monitor and assess and must not be used as a high stakes accountability measure.
Similarly, the NAO’s recommendation that the government work with Ofsted to reintroduce ‘arrangements for obtaining independent assurance about schools’ provision,’ must not be used to facilitate a swift return to ‘normal’. While the NAO asks the government to recognise the additional pressures that schools are currently under, this does not go far enough. Now is an opportunity to evaluate the role and purpose of Ofsted and how they might be able to support schools rather than contribute to an untimely and inappropriate restoration of a culture of high stakes accountability.
Schools North East’s Post-Covid Regional Plan
The last year has been an unforeseen and unprecedented challenge for schools. Despite this NE school staff have acted as a fourth emergency service, supporting their students and whole school communities. They have worked tirelessly to do this, and, as this report highlights, often with inadequate or delayed support from the government, as well as working in the face of ever changing guidance and delayed decision making. The challenges schools face are ongoing and we are likely to be faced with new ones as we ‘recover’ from the impact of Covid-19. As such the government must now focus on supporting schools in the longer term.
As a region with high levels of long term deprivation, the impact of the pandemic is likely to be felt harder and for longer in the North East. As such we are working towards a ‘recovery’ plan for the region’s schools, based on the principles of our Manifesto for North East Education, in order to not only tackle the issues of Covid but the perennial issues affecting education in the region. As part of this work, we will be holding further roundtable discussions to understand the views of our school leaders and allow us to represent the voice of North East schools to policymakers.
You can read the full report on the NAO website. Schools North East Partner Schools have received a Bitesize Briefing on this report. You can find out more about becoming a Partner School on our website.
