Nursery World - Coronavirus: 10 years of closing the gap reversed by school closures

Nearly a decade of closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers is ‘likely’ to have been wiped out by school closures as a result of coronavirus.

Schools and settings have started to reopen to primary children this week, after being closed to all but vulnerable children and key workers since 20 March

Over the past decade, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates at the end of primary school is estimated to have narrowed, from 11.5 months in 2009 to 9.2 months in 2019 according to the Education Policy Institute.

An analysis by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) looking at the impact on the attainment gap as a result of different kinds of school closures concludes that school closures as a result of Covid-19 will widen the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers, likely reversing the progress made since 2011.

The attainment gap rapid evidence assessment estimates that the average gap would widen by 36 per cent, but the estimated rate of gap widening varied substantially between studies, meaning that there is a high level of uncertainty around this average, with estimates for the gap widening ranging between 11 per cent and 75 per cent.

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