Schools may be forced to introduce weekend lessons, drop non-core subjects, return to a pre-lockdown curriculum and overspend their budgets to hire extra staff in order to help pupils who have struggled academically throughout lockdown, headteachers have warned.
The attainment gap between socio-economically disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers has widened considerably as a result of school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to education charities.
The government has announced a £1bn “catch-up plan” to help these pupils who have fallen behind, including a £350m National Tutoring Programme to subsidise tutoring by up to 75%.
But early years providers and colleges for 16- to 19-year-olds are not included in the plans, and the programme is not expected to offer tutoring to pupils until November – giving disadvantaged pupils two extra months where they could potentially fall even further behind their classmates.
For the first time in her 22-year career in education, Katrina Morley, CEO of Tees Valley Education, has overspent on all of her budgets to hire additional staff to prepare for next week’s reopening.
As the head of a multi-academy trust made up of five primary academies across Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland, Morley works with some of the most impoverished communities in the UK; one of her schools is in the bottom 1% in terms of deprivation.
Her children have not only faced digital poverty – she estimates about 80% of them do not have access to a laptop or computer – but some have not had food on the table, or electricity and gas. “We have needed to provide pencils and pens, things most of us would have in our homes. My pupils have suffered – and not just academically,” she told HuffPost UK.
She describes her schools as a “motorway” made up of three tiers: the general day-to-day learning in any school, a second tier of “profound disadvantage” where deprived children are denied access through genuine poverty; and now the catch-up from Covid-19. And she estimates it could take up to two years for students just to catch up on the last six months.
“My pupils have suffered – and not just academically”
In order to cope with this additional tier, she has hired extra teachers on two-year contracts, trained specialists in special education needs, as well as psychologists and a trauma counsellor. Her schools will be offering after-school lessons, breakfast clubs, as well as smaller group work to ensure a smaller pupil-to-adult ratio.
“My staff are amazing and they’re used to working hard to try and level the playing field for children who are significantly disadvantaged, but they can’t give much more than they already have so we’ve got additional staffing.
“I’ve overspent on all of my budgets and explained to the Department of Education that as far as I’m concerned, these are about my children’s life chances and I’m not going to be the one that says no to them. How dare any one of us not give them what they’re absolutely entitled to in 2020 when they’ve already got enough barriers in their lives?”
In addition to hiring extra staff, her academies may choose to reset their curriculum back to pre-lockdown days. “We can’t just suddenly move everyone up to a Year 6 if they didn’t finish the whole of Year 5,” she continued.
“We need to assess where our children are now in comparison to where they were in March, so we can understand the gaps to find out who has seen some regression or whose progression has stood still. That way we can decide if we need to go back a little in order to reactivate some prior knowledge, in order to come forward again.”
Sarah Holmes-Carne, principal at Kenton School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, said her academy was also planning to introduce weekend and after-school sessions for her new Year 11 students due to take their GCSEs next summer.
“We’re recalibrating our plans for the coming year, but it’s important to get the balance right,” she told HuffPost UK. “We don’t want to inundate our children with too much because everyone will just be exhausted and stressed.
“We need to make sure we’ve identified the gaps and work on those deficits, so the extra lessons would be personalised to individual learners or groups and not a one-size-fits-all situation.”
Her school has tried to keep a close eye on its pupils in an attempt to keep everyone up to speed. “We had weekly phone calls and structured home visits and were able to monitor who was accessing home learning and who wasn’t. Not every child has access to the internet and a laptop at home, so we made sure to have paper copies of everything.”
“We don’t want to inundate our children with too much because everyone will just be exhausted and stressed.”
When her pupils return to school next week, they will find their timetable has been changed so they will start each day with their tutor. “Nobody knows how children are going to be like after Covid-19, but by making sure they spend the first 30 minutes each day with a person that knows them well, we can make sure their emotional well-being is identified and supported.”
But Holmes-Carne is reluctant to change her school’s curriculum for now. “It’s still too early to know – we need guidance from a national level because we don’t want to be in a position where we’ve changed something too hastily that could put our children at a disadvantage compared to their peers.”
While the government’s £350m National Tutoring Programme has been positively received by heads of schools, education charity The Access Project is calling for the plan to be extended to Year 12 and 13 pupils.
“There is no obvious reason the government has chosen to exclude them,” said the charity’s CEO, Nathan Sansom. “In fact, it’s even more important that A-level students are given access to this programme because there’s a really big step up from GCSEs to A-levels.”
The exams fiasco has also led to universities deferring some of this year’s places. “Sadly that means it’s going to be even more difficult for disadvantaged students to get into university next year because they are effectively fighting over a smaller number of places. It’s therefore even more important the support goes in for disadvantaged students who will be sitting their A-levels in 2021,” he added.
Although his Year 10 to 13 students were able to attend some classes in person in June and July and as such are “in a reasonably good position”, UTC South Durham’s principal Tom Dower said he was still concerned about the potential attainment gap in his classrooms next week.
“It would be a really foolish mistake for students to have a full-on exam season.”
“We’ve had lots of communication with families,” he told HuffPost UK. “Some students have not been making much progress in their development generally, and others have because of the opportunities available to them.
“Some students have had real problems with a lack of technology. We have one boy who is one of eight children in the family, so finding space to be able to work and think is really difficult – there are plenty of examples of those.”
As the head of a college for 14- to 19-year-olds, Dower is particularly concerned about how this gap will affect pupils due to take their GCSEs or A-levels next summer. He believes the government’s plan to run exams as normal is “really foolish mistake” that could have a “detrimental” impact on pupils’ development and “put unfair pressure on students as well as staff”.
In order to cope with a full-on exam season, his pupils will “sadly” drop poetry from their English syllabus and many are expected to reduce the number of GCSEs from the usual nine or 10. “Poetry absolutely needs to be part of a child’s education, but we’re trying to just remove part of the content.” He said many other schools would also be forced to drop subjects such as art and revert to only a few subjects as a result.
“We need to take a deep breath and move intelligently towards a system that is actually fair to everybody. Exams can be important for some knowledge-based testing, but all students should produce some coursework elements and teacher assessment has a really important place as well.”
Although his teachers will most likely work have to work overtime, because his pupils already study for 31 hours a week (compared with the average 25 hours in most schools), no extra after-school tutoring has been planned.
And while the school heads and education experts who spoke to HuffPost UK were divided over the methods they plan to carry out to rescue disadvantaged pupils from the attainment gap, they were unanimous in saying it was crucial for these students to safely return to their classroom as soon as possible.
“It’s so important that everything is done to get schools and pupils back in September,” Action Tutoring’s CEO, Susannah Hardyman, said. “If pupils miss any more learning time, the damage will be absolutely huge – not just to their learning but also to their social, emotional and mental health.”