Schools reopening plan must factor in opportunity gap

Education can be the great levelling force in our society, yet for weeks our schools have been shut because of coronavirus, so the education gaps that already needed to be narrowed are growing wider by the day. 

Very few children have been able to attend school. With talk of a phased return to school over the coming weeks the principal objective has to be to stop the COVID 19 opportunity gap getting any wider, combined with a plan to help children catch up.  

Despite many parents' best efforts to keep education going in difficult circumstances, this time out of school will impact some much more than others. It would be sensible for Government to prioritise the children we know are disproportionately missing out the most from being out of school and away from their teachers. That means Free School Meal children, special needs children and those confronting the important transitions from primary to secondary should be top of the list to consider prioritising in any phased school return.

Teacher Tapp, a teacher research app, has shown how clearly teachers feel that many students are not studying as much as they could, whether in primary or secondary, and it doesn’t affect all children the same. The teachers responding to a Teacher Tapp survey have said they feel limited parental support, or a long standing poor attitude to school played a part, but they also pointed to differences in access to the right technology to support studying. 

On that point the differences between those in private and state schools was much more pronounced, with double the number of state school teachers (60%) saying access to technology was a problem compared to private school teachers (31%). For those children in the most deprived areas, this problem was the most challenging. 

Similarly teachers also judged those children as most likely to be missing education because of limited or no parental support for teaching. The evidence suggests that targeting is necessary as schools reopen. 

No one wants any child to miss out because of coronavirus but let’s make sure those for whom being out of school proved the biggest problem get back into school the soonest.

Rt Hon Justine Greening

Founder, Social Mobility Pledge

Former Secretary of State for Education, Minister for Women and Equalities, Secretary of State for International Development, Secretary of State for Transport, Economic Secretary to the Treasury