Spending watchdog blasts ministers over ‘long-term adverse effects’ of children having lessons online during Covid lockdown
- Government ministers blasted by National Audit Office over poor online learning
- Report from the Office claims some children were left without laptop for months
- The authors said Government lacked ‘contingency plan’ when closing schools
Ministers have been blasted by the official spending watchdog over the ‘long-term adverse effects’ of poor online learning during lockdown.
A report by the National Audit Office today says some children were left without a laptop for months and many of those that had one did hardly any work.
The authors said the Government lacked a ‘contingency plan’ when it closed schools and was slow to make sure online classes were being provided.
Poor pupils were the worst affected because they had less access to technology and their schools were in many cases less proactive.
Ministers have been blasted by the official spending watchdog over the ‘long-term adverse effects’ of poor online learning during lockdown (stock image)
It will mean a significant widening of the attainment gap between rich and poor unless pupils are helped to catch up, the authors said.
In addition, the NAO found a special scheme to lay on extra tuition may not be reaching the poorest, and one in three eligible schools still don’t have a dedicated tutor.
The report said some of the Department for Education’s (DfE) emergency actions ‘could have been done better or more quickly’ and resulted in children falling behind. Schools were not legally forced to lay on internet lessons until five months into the pandemic, meaning provision was patchy. Some children may have been accessing lessons for only an estimated two hours a day, the authors said.
By July, teachers estimated their pupils were on average three months behind in the curriculum.
In addition, many of the 220,000 laptops and tablets distributed by the DfE to disadvantaged children in the summer term did not go out until June.
Some 82 per cent of secondary pupils in private schools had received active help, such as online classes, or video and text chat. By contrast, 64 per cent of secondary pupils in state schools from the richest one-fifth of households received active help, compared with 47 per cent of pupils from the poorest one-fifth.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: ‘The evidence shows that children’s learning and development has been held back by the disruption to normal schooling.’ The Government is now implementing a national catch-up scheme involving extra tuition, but the report found it may not be getting to those most in need.
Fewer than half of the pupils who have started to receive tuition so far are from low-income families.
The report comes amid a campaign by this newspaper to raise money for the MailForce charity to provide refurbished and new laptops to struggling pupils.
Mail readers, philanthropists and corporate donors have given an amazing £12.6million in cash and computers to provide laptops to those who have no access to one at home.
A DfE spokesman said: ‘We have invested over £2billion into schemes to provide pupils with devices for remote education and ambitious catch-up plans – with funding targeted at disadvantaged children and young people who need support the most.’
Yesterday, official data from the DfE showed 1,267,451 laptops and tablets have been dispatched to poor pupils by the Government since the start of the pandemic.
This is around 32,500 short of its overall target of 1.3 million.