Students in England fell behind by average of three months during shutdown, study finds

Boys appeared to have been affected more than girls, the study found, and poor students struggled the most. On average, teachers estimated that the learning gap between disadvantaged students and their classmates had widened by 46 percent.

Educators in schools with the fewest resources were more than three times as likely to say that their students were more than four months behind, and they predicted that larger numbers of students would need intensive support to catch up.

“Whilst it is crucial that children catch up, we should not assume that teachers will immediately be able to deliver the same quality of teaching, at the same speed, as before the pandemic,” said Angela Donkin, the chief social scientist at NFER.

The survey sought responses from more than 3,000 teachers and administrators who taught at approximately 2,200 primary and secondary schools across England, at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. The survey did not include teachers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the other nations that make up Britain.

While some schools were able to reopen in July, many parents continued to keep their children home over safety concerns. Only about 56 percent of eligible students returned, the study found, and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were even less likely to do so.

Britain is set to begin its new school year this week, with millions of children back in classrooms, many for the first time since spring, with the encouragement of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. But parents and teachers have expressed reservations.

On Tuesday, as roughly 40 percent of students in England and Wales returned to schools, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said he did not “underestimate how challenging the last few months have been,” but that he knew “how important it is for children to be back in school, not only for their education but for their development and well-being, too.”

Even as schools reopen, the survey suggests more challenges for teaching and learning lie ahead.

Nearly three-quarters of teachers said they felt they could not teach in a way that met their usual standards because of social distancing requirements, which prevented them from assigning group work or freely moving around the classroom to interact with students.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, told the BBC that the government needed to hire new “qualified teachers not currently in post” to help reduce class sizes and ease the burden on the teachers already in place.

Britain’s main opposition party, Labour, has called for Britain’s summer 2021 school exams to be delayed, pointing to the chaotic situation this summer after an algorithm estimated how students would have done on exams they weren’t able to take because of the coronavirus.

After that system appeared to give students at exclusive fee-paying private schools higher grades but penalized top-performing students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the government was forced to reverse course and award students grades based on teacher assessment.