Back in May 2021, the Education Endowment Foundation published an interim version of a report, Covid-19 disruptions: Attainment gaps and primary school responses, which Datalab worked on along with colleagues at Teacher Tapp and the Education Endowment Foundation.

It looks at how the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates changed in primary schools during the course of the pandemic.

Today a final report has been published. It updates the original analysis using the latest data from the 2020/21 academic year.

In this post, we’ll pick out the headline findings, focusing on what’s new in the updated report.

Some background

Early on in the pandemic, it was recognised that the disruption to education – damaging for all pupils – would likely be particularly harmful for disadvantaged pupils. This would lead to the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers increasing still further. But it was difficult to predict exactly how much the gap was likely to increase.

Since then, several studies have been published that attempt to answer that question. Our report is the latest of these.

It looks at the attainment gap among primary pupils, considering attainment in reading and maths separately. We used attainment data from standardized reading and maths assessments developed by RS Assessment (PIRA and PUMA tests and NTS tests), collected from 132 primary schools.

Colleagues at Teacher Tapp also carried out a series of teacher surveys, looking to understand how schools had responded to the challenges of the pandemic and whether any of these responses was particularly successful in closing the attainment gap.

The attainment gap

Although we promised to focus on what’s new in this updated report, we think it worth reiterating some of the earlier findings on the attainment gap here.

The graph below shows the estimated change in the maths attainment gap for each period covered in the report, in effect size units. A negative estimate indicates that the attainment gap got wider and a positive estimate that it narrowed.^[1]

Between Autumn Term 2019 and the end of the 2020/21, we estimate that the attainment gap in maths widened by 0.05 effect size units – that’s the equivalent of around one month of additional progress using the EEF’s conversion methods, and represents an 11% increase in the pre-COVID attainment gap.

But most of the widening occurred during the period of the first lockdown and partial school closures. Estimates based on the most recent data suggest there may even have been a slight recovery during summer term last year.

The next chart shows the same estimates for the attainment gap in reading.

Unlike maths, we didn’t find any conclusive evidence to show that the attainment gap in reading had widened, not even during the first lockdown period.

How did schools respond to lockdown?

When we first planned this piece of work, we’d expected lockdowns and school closures would be over by the end of Summer Term 2020.

Things didn’t quite work out that way and schools were faced with a second period of (partial) closures in early 2021.

We surveyed schools after both closure periods, focusing in on five key questions that give us some insight into how schools responded to the switch to remote learning for the majority of pupils.

The charts below compare responses from the first and second closure periods.

In the second closure period, schools were making more use of technology in their teaching practice. The majority (76%) used live video lessons, compared to just 12% in the first closure period. Most schools (63%) had an instructed daily timetable and 76% required work to be submitted every day, but these figures were just 15% and 31% in the first closure period.

It’s no great surprise that schools were less likely to have these sorts of measures in place during the first closure period when remote learning was sprung on them abruptly. What is perhaps more surprising is how well schools had adapted by the time of the second closure period. Pre-pandemic, it would have been almost unthinkable that such radical changes in practice could be brought in so quickly.

Closing the attainment gap?

We were interested in whether any of the school responses described above were associated with changes in the attainment gap. We also looked at some of the measures that schools used to help pupils make up for lost learning when they returned to in-person schooling in Autumn Term 2020.

But, perhaps surprisingly, we found no conclusive evidence that any of the school responses we identified were associated with the attainment gap narrowing.

Of course, that’s not to say that none of them are beneficial for disadvantaged pupils, but rather that they don’t appear to be any more beneficial for disadvantaged pupils than they are for other pupils.

We researchers don’t always like inconclusive results, but it’s still useful to know that no one response seems to be clearly associated with closing the gap. Instead, schools and teachers will be best placed to decide on responses that will work for their pupils.

Some conclusions

The attainment gap in maths between disadvantaged primary pupils and their peers has increased by 11% over the course of the pandemic. Much of that increase happened during the first period of lockdown and school closures and we’ve found no conclusive evidence of the gap beginning to close.

But there is some good news. While the gap isn’t closing, it isn’t widening either. And the attainment gap in reading doesn’t seem to have increased at all.

For more details on all of our findings, methodology and more, you can read the full report here. Our round up of the headlines from the interim version of the report is here.