700,000 children do not have a laptop or tablet for home learning – as the coronavirus has widens the attainment gap between pupils.
Children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, said the outcome of the pandemic on vulnerable pupils creates a ‘a stark risk of them falling behind their peers’.
What has been the impact of Covid-19 on the attainment gap? This blog post explains.
Schools worry if children will ever come back
School leaders fear the number of pupils staying away will grow with more distractions in the summer months, according to Ms Longfield.
They (teachers) stay up worrying if these students will ever come back, because the leap they will need to get them back to school will be so vast.
Poorest pupils could be 12 months behind
A report by the Education Endowment Foundation, said that the poorest pupils who were already nine months behind – could fall behind by another three months.
A fast track programme to get children caught up as quickly as possible, Ms Longfield says:
The risk of not doing that would be the deficit in learning for those children.
Children may shun lessons as parents go to work
There is another group of pupils, that Ms Longfield warns, that could also lose out on education.
Longfield says that pupils who are currently learning from home under parental supervision, could shun future lessons as these parents go back to work.
Other things (could soon) become more interesting.
The shops will open soon and kids could have spent two and a half months browsing Primark, but not been in school, so the other things that will actually be distractions become more and more.
Those who are disadvantaged, who maybe have negative experiences of school, will have more time away from it.
How EDLounge can help
EDLounge supports ‘education for all’.
We believe there should be an expectation on learning, while students are working from home.
EDLounge’s system delivers lessons, assessments, learning materials and exams which match the current curriculum and can be tailored to pupils needs. A sophisticated tracking system means both attainment and progress are monitored, and feedback can be delivered in an instance. As all work is tracked online, feedback delivered by teachers can be more accurate.
For more information on tracking click here.
11,000+ lessons are available in subjects including Maths, English and Science. Safeguarding is EDLounge’s number one priority with alert mechanisms, eyes-on learning, instant/video chat with teachers and highly trained DBS checked staff in operation.
For more information, call 01909 568 338.
