This NFER study follows a group of the youngest school-aged children during and since the Covid-19 pandemic to understand the long-term impact of Covid-19 related disruption to schools on pupils’ attainment and social skills.
The research aims to estimate the ‘Covid-19 gap’ and the ‘disadvantage gap’ and track changes in these over time to gain an understanding of how quickly pupils’ attainment catches up to where it might be expected to be, had the pandemic not happened.
Overall, the Covid-19 gap appears to have closed for Year 4 and Year 5 pupils on average in both reading and mathematics. Moreover, in Year 4 reading, pupils were two months ahead although this was not statistically significant.
In each of reading and mathematics, for both Year 4 and Year 5, the Covid-19 gap significantly reduced from spring 2021 to spring 2024.
The disadvantage gaps for reading in spring 2024 for Year 4 and Year 5 are around seven and six months’ progress, respectively. For Year 4 pupils’ reading, there has been a reduction in the disadvantage gap since we measured it in spring 2021. For Year 5 pupils’ reading, although disadvantaged pupils scored significantly higher in spring 2024 than in spring 2021, the change in scores was at the same rate as for pupils not eligible for FSM, i.e. the gap has not decreased since spring 2021.