Across the world over 1.2 billion children have had their education affected by lockdowns imposed in response to COVID-19. England is no exception (I will focus on England as education is a devolved responsibility in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). On April 29th, opening the inquiry into the impact of COVID-19 on education, Robert Halfon MP was frank:

‘the coronavirus has thrown up three very serious issues: a potential wave of educational poverty, significant safeguarding worries for children, and a digital divide… this is a potential cascade of mounting social injustice that could last a generation’.

English schools have begun a phased reopening after being shut on 20th March, locking out 8 million pupils except the children of key workers and vulnerable children. Schools scrambled to move learning online and have since been highly praised for their efforts (60% of parents are happy with their schools response). But just as COVID-19 has exposed deep inequalities in economic and political systems, the impact on England’s education system has varied enormously. For example, 60% of private schools had online learning systems already up and running before COVID-19, compared to only 23% of the most deprived schools. Education in England is one of the most important routes to social mobility. COVID-19 threatens to widen the gulf between rich and poor, as poorer children have less access to laptops and parents with fewer qualifications struggle to tutor their children.

In some ways younger children suffer the most from being out of school. The fundamental social and emotional skills - perseverance, self-control, self-confidence, sociability – are all harder to teach at home. Older children who fall behind with maths can make up for lost time, but for younger children these fundamental skills are difficult to acquire later on.

For school-age children online learning has exposed a sharp digital divide. Only 2% of teachers in the most disadvantaged schools think that all their pupils can access the devices they need for online learning, as opposed to nearly 40% in private schools.

Similarly, better-off schools were far more prepared for online classes than schools in deprived areas. Unsurprisingly this correlates to the amount of homework teachers have received back from pupils working at home. 50% of private school teachers have received three quarters of homework back in contrast to 27% of schools in the most disadvantaged areas.

Teenagers face an uncertain future as GCSEs and A-Levels have been cancelled. Whilst for some this may be cause to rejoice, for many it is deeply unsettling. A-level exams have been replaced by predicted grades based on teacher assessments, moderated by exam regulators. Predicted grades have been shown to be badly inaccurate. They also risk affecting poorer children the most. The Sutton Trust worries that some teachers will ‘underestimate the abilities of poorer students’, and 35% of locked down students report that they are not receiving enough help with their university applications. Exams are a leveller; no matter where you are from, no one can dispute your exam results. Losing them risks harming poorer pupils.

“Exams are a leveller; no matter where you are from, no one can dispute your exam results. Losing them risks harming poorer pupils.”

Once locked down at home, a child’s learning greatly depends on support from their parents. Notably, according to the Sutton Trust, there was little difference in the extent of supervision from parents from working class and middle class backgrounds. Whatever their background children were not being left to learn alone. But wealthier, better-educated parents were more confident homeschooling their children and encouraged their children to work for longer. Over 75% of parents with a postgraduate degree were confident handling their child’s education, as opposed to less than 50% of parents who never attended university.

For vulnerable children school is not only a place to learn, it is a safe haven. In 2017 over a million English children were eligible for, and claiming, free school meals. The NSPCC has reported a 20% increase in calls during the UK’s lockdown. These challenges are not unique to England. In America over 30 million children rely on their school for breakfast and lunch. Teachers around the world worry that some children, kept away from school by COVID-19, will dropout and never return. A head teacher in Australia worried about two groups of children in particular: those that had taken on jobs to support their families and those at risk of becoming involved in crime. For the former she worried that ‘those jobs will become their station in life, and that’s not giving them the opportunities they could have had’. Julie Hourigan Ruse, the chief executive of a charity working with vulnerable Australian children, similarly feared the long-term consequences of children dropping out:

‘These will be the kids and the adults, in two, three, four years, who are standing out in front of Centrelink needing government support’.

COVID-19 has hugely affected education in England. Indeed, it may seem strange that so much damage can be done in a matter of months, as many children in Europe look likely to return to school throughout June. But in education, as in health and the economy, COVID-19 has led to a vast variety of experiences both within countries and across the world. Put starkly by Emily Maitlis on BBC Newsnight, ‘they tell us coronavirus is a great leveller. It’s not. It’s much, much harder if you’re poor’. In the long run, the greatest impact of COVID-19 will be felt by those children who were already vulnerable and for whom education is the crucial ladder to a better life. It is on these children that we must concentrate our efforts.