Second lockdown easier on parents than first, as schools offered more online lessons -IFS report

The speed at which schools adapted to the use of technology during the Covid-19 lockdowns left parents and children better able to cope with home learning as the pandemic continued, according to new research.

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Home learning experience through the Covid-19 pandemic, published today (September 6), said that home learning experiences improved significantly between the two main school closures.

The study found that “schools dramatically changed their home learning provisions between the lockdowns, transitioning to more active resources”. In primary schools, the share of parents reporting their child’s school offered active provision increased from 49% in the spring 2020 lockdown to 78% during the school closures from January 2021. In secondary schools, the increase was from 62% to 92% for the same period.

Researchers found that this was driven almost entirely by a rise in online lessons, which replaced passive provision such as paper-based learning packs. In addition, guidance from the Department for Education calling on schools to make use of Microsoft Teams or Google Classrooms for remote learning encouraged use of online platforms for live lessons.

As a result, 70% of parents reported that schools offered more support during the second lockdown than the first.

“The fact that schools changed their offerings substantially, in a direction favoured by parents, suggests that schools learnt considerably during the pandemic, taking on board feedback about which resources were most useful,” the report said.

The second school shutdown saw a big improvement in the numbers of pupils with access to computers or other devices for learning. Among primary-aged pupils, 65% had access to a laptop or tablet whenever they needed it, an 11-percentage point rise from the first lockdown.

Part of the reason for this, the IFS said, was the outcome of the government’s scheme to deliver 1.3 million devices to those most in need, as well as individual programmes by schools and charities to improve access to technology. Many families also bought or upgraded their own home technology.

As a result, schools assumed more of the responsibility for overseeing children’s remote learning, easing the pressures on parents and improving the quality of education. Parents reported spending a third less time supervising their children’s learning at home during the second lockdown, compared with the first.

In contrast to the first lockdown, the second round of school closures saw secondary pupils’ learning time rise from 22 to 29 hours a week, and from 22 to 26 hours a week among primary pupils, the IFS said. The share of pupils being offered online classes grew by almost 30 percentage points between April/May 2020 and February/March 2021. Pupils were also more likely to be able to access these classes, as more had access to devices at home.

Where parents were continuing to support their children, this became easier with increased use of technology, and greater knowledge and understanding of what approaches worked best for their children.

However, despite all these improvements, 40% of children did not meet the government’s minimum guidelines for learning time even during the second period of school closures. The IFS report also warned that the first lockdown had exposed large inequalities which would be hard to overcome despite better quality provision and more devices, with a quarter of parents believing it would take their children at least a year to catch up.

Professor Rose Luckin, director of EDUCATE Ventures Research, said the IFS report chimed with some of the findings of EDUCATE’s own study Shock to the System: Lessons from Covid-19, published earlier this year.

Professor Luckin said: “The IFS findings are timely, with the start of the new academic year and as teachers begin to tackle some of the deficits in learning among their pupils during the pandemic.

“What is so heartening about this report, however, is clear evidence of the willingness of schools and parents to find ways forward in this unique crisis and the speed at which teachers and families adapted to technology and new ways of learning. This was vital to minimise the impact on education.

“Policymakers, educators and parents must now find ways of harnessing this new-found expertise and knowledge to develop a wide-ranging strategy for online learning so that, in future, no child is excluded from education because of circumstances they cannot control.”

Adam Salisbury, a Research Economist at IFS and an author of the report, said: “Thanks to the efforts of teachers, schools, families and policymakers, the second round of remote learning went far better than the first time around. But even with this welcome improvement, many children still struggled with home learning; around four in ten pupils did not meet the government’s minimum guidelines for learning time during the second round of school closures.

“With this huge hit to children’s learning we have seen so far, it is perhaps unsurprising that a quarter of parents think their child will need a year or more to recover learning lost during the pandemic.”