GCSE attainment gap has doubled during pandemic
PUPILS on free school meals in Wales got fewer top exam grades than their better-off peers when exams were cancelled and results assessed by teachers, data obtained by the Western Mail reveals.
The attainment gap for top GCSE grades widened during the pandemic, with traditional sat exams ditched and learners awarded grades on work done during their courses.
Findings come as schools and colleges have been told to plan to assess learners for grades again as a contingency in case next summer’s planned exams have to be called off again because of the pandemic.
In 2019, the last year traditional exams were sat, the attainment gap at the top A* GCSE grade stood at 5.3% points between those getting free school meals and those not eligible – that gap had more than doubled by 2021.
In summer 2020, the first year of assessed grades, the A* gap had swelled to 8.7 percentage points and by this summer, after more than a year of Covid disruption, that had widened further to an 11.5 percentage point difference.
At A* to B, the attainment gap widened from 23.9 percentage points difference in 2019 to 28.9 in summer 2021, the second year of teacherassessed grades.
For A* to C grades, the gap has remained almost the same at 27 percentage points this year and in 2019 but dipped to 24 percentage points difference in the first year of assessed grades in 2020.
Narrowing the attainment gap between those on free school meals and those not has been a long-term ambition of the Welsh Government and successive education ministers. But the issue has remained stubborn.
Now it seems pupils from less welloff backgrounds have been further disadvantaged during the pandemic, with schools shut and pupils sent home for varying periods depending on how badly the virus hit locally.
Successive reports since Covid hit have shown less well-off schoolchildren were less likely to have had devices and support for remote working at the start of lockdowns. They may also have been affected by not having quiet spaces to work in at home, and even, in some cases, not having enough to eat.
Schools in some areas have described how they delivered food, equipment and books to pupils during school closures at the height of the pandemic and lockdowns. Councils worked with schools to deliver stocks of devices but there were gaps and reports of children having to share one device with siblings to log on to lessons and work online.
Releasing the statistics, exam regulator Qualifications Wales said results had been unusual during the pandemic, with far more top grades awarded, and that would mean changes in the attainment gap.
Covid, the amount of school and learning missed and the fact that more pupils became eligible for free school meals during the pandemic, will all have affected the gaps in attainment, the regulator added.
Tom Anderson, head of research and statistics at Qualifications Wales, said: “When national results change substantially, attainment gaps will also change.
“There are several factors to consider such as the impact of the pandemic on education, changes to qualification assessment and grading, and an increase in the number of learners eligible for free school meals in the 2020-21 school year.
“Due to the number of different factors affecting the education system, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions about what has caused changes in attainment gaps.”