Poorer pupils still lag behind better-off children after Covid lockdowns, watchdog says
- National Audit Office warned the attainment gap between children has grown
- Half of children following the National Tutorship Programme are disadvantaged
Poorer pupils are still further behind their better-off peers following Covid lockdowns, a watchdog has found.
The National Audit Office (NAO) warned that the attainment gap between the two groups of children has grown despite efforts to help them catch up.
Learning loss for disadvantaged pupils had been ‘consistently greater’ than for other pupils, it also discovered.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: ‘The Department for Education needs to take action to support pupils to make up the learning they lost... and reach children who had been disproportionately affected by the disruption to schooling.’
Poorer pupils are still further behind their better-off peers following Covid lockdowns, a watchdog has found (file image)
Learning loss for disadvantaged pupils had been ‘consistently greater’ than for other pupils, it also discovered (file image)
The disadvantage gap index – a measure of the difference in attainment between disadvantaged and other pupils – at the end of primary school was 3.23 in 2022, compared with 2.91 in 2019.
About half of the pupils receiving tutoring under the Government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme, which aims to help students catch up on learning missed during the pandemic, were disadvantaged in 2021/22.
The report also found that 51 per cent of pupils getting help through the Tuition Partners scheme were disadvantaged – short of the DfE’s target of 65 per cent.
Dame Meg Hillier, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: ‘The DfE must stay focused on addressing learning loss for all children.
'The long-term cost of failing to do so is huge.’
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