Pandemic Accelerated Widening Attainment Gap for Disadvantaged Pupils: Report

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, a think tank has said. A report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) published on Tuesday found that while progress in closing the gap had already started to stall in 2019, “the pandemic accelerated this trend.” The report said that between 2019—the year before the COVID-19 lockdowns—and 2023, “we have seen the disadvantage gap widen in early years, primary schools and secondary schools,” noting that only in post-compulsory 16-19 education has the disadvantage gap appeared to have returned to pre-pandemic levels. The EPI said that although the examinations and grade distributions largely returned to normal in 2023, “the impact of the pandemic is not yet over” and “educational inequalities look very different from how they did in 2019.”...