Better-off pupils ‘seven days ahead’ with home learning

CHILDREN from wealthy households will have received seven days’ worth of additional home learning by the time primary schools begin reopening next month, a report found, as Michael Gove warned that poorer students were being left behind.

Amid a row over plans for key year groups to return to the classroom from June 1, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that betteroff children are spending an additional 75 minutes per day on education.

If the Government is forced to abandon the plans, the gap between the most affluent and poorest students will double to three school weeks by the time they eventually return in September, the study said. The IFS warned that the trend risks widening the gulf in educational outcomes and was likely to be reflected in pupils’ test scores when exams are reinstated next year.

It comes after Mr Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, highlighted the impact of school closures on disadvantaged pupils as he called on teaching unions and councils to drop their opposition to primary schools returning from June 1.

On the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show, Mr Gove, who is also Cabinet Office minister, said: “Over the course of the last decade we’ve made significant strides in closing the gap between the richest and the poorest in our schools. This lockdown has put that backwards.”

In an earlier interview with Sky

News, Mr Gove added that the longer children are away from school, “the more the divide between those children who are in privileged circumstances and those children who are in less privileged circumstances grows”.

According to the IFS, the problem is being exacerbated due to wealthier pupils having access to additional teaching resources, with children from the top 20 per cent of households twice as likely to be getting private tuition. The report found that they also have better access to technology.

A survey of 4,000 parents commissioned as part of the report found that high-income families are also more likely to report receiving more interactive resources from their children’s schools to support home learning.

Meanwhile, there is a greater reluctance among parents from poorer households to send their children back to school during the pandemic.

Alison Andrew, senior research economist at the IFS and co-author of the report, said: “This risks leaving the children least able to cope with home learning remaining at home, even as their better-off classmates return to school.”