Widening Disadvantage?

The UK Government has announced that schools in September will once again be full. Some parents are probably celebrating and looking forward to the break from home education.

As a teacher, I am very pleased that we can go back to teaching. The pandemic has shown me the impact of teaching on student motivation. When given freedom to work from home many students have not completed any work. There are of course obvious reasons for why this work has not be completed (lack of IT equipment, place to study, parents working from home). This post does not discuss these reasons it focuses on the where we should go now.

As I have checked the students’ work each week, I have seen the level of productivity fall. During this whole lockdown period, I could not help but wonder what will the longer-term implications of the missed time in school be?

I hope the answer my question is ‘little impact’. Unfortunately, I do not think this will be the case for a number of children. Without a regular school day, students from more challenging backgrounds get further behind their non-disadvantaged peers. The most recent report from the Sutton Trust makes this abundantly clear. The gap between PPG (Pupil Premium Grant) & non-PPG students will have been widening day-by-day and something must be done to minimise this advantage.

The Government’s solution is to provide additional funding (£1.0bn) to help head teachers. Once again the plan has no details. If this will be a top up to the PPG funding, then as in most schools struggling to balance the books, the funds will inevitably be spent on running costs and staffing. This defeats the objective and once again the PPG students will not get the targeted support they need.

In my view, the best option is to provide access to excellent revision schools such the Easter school at Wellington College. Teachers willing to give up some of their holiday (paid) to support the most disadvantaged students could provide the provision. I am also sure that schools would be willing to provide the hire of the site for free. The additional benefit of using schools such as Wellington is that they can show students the opportunities that are out there.

If we are not prepared to realise the impact of this pandemic on students from poorer backgrounds then we run the risk of further segregating our fragile society.