During the COVID-19 pandemic, the very youngest pupils in schools had their schooling and social interactions in the classroom disrupted by lengthy periods of school closures and remote learning. This research focuses particularly on these young pupils, and is exploring how their learning and social skills are recovering two years on from the…

This is a longitudinal study that follows the youngest school-age children affected by the COVID-19 pandemic over time to understand the long-term impact of the partial school closure on pupils' attainment (reading and maths) and social skills, and on the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. The research,…

The pandemic has led to considerable disruption to the learning of all pupils in England. This report analyses the general trends in the data across several studies investigating the impact of COVID-19 on educational attainment in England, from March 2020 onwards, and identifies where particular attention is needed. It is broken down into four…

This report outlines the results of the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) in England. PIRLS is an international comparative study directed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The aim of PIRLS is to assess and compare the reading performance of pupils in their fourth year of…

Schools in England have experienced unprecedented disruptions due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. There were two periods during which in-person learning was restricted for the majority of pupils: first for 14 weeks in spring 2020; and then for eight weeks in winter 2021. During these periods of partial closure, many pupils experienced some…

This report presents the Education Policy Institute and Renaissance Learning's first assessment of the learning loss experienced by pupils in England as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis is based on the results achieved by pupils in the first half of the 2020/21 autumn term (up to and including 25 October 2020) in…

White Rose Maths (WRM) commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to conduct research to explore evidence that suggested a wider COVID-19 attainment gap in schools in Yorkshire and the Humber region in Autumn 2020, to understand the challenges that schools face, and how recovery in the region can best be supported. This…

The study uses data from five assessment points for reading and maths. It focuses on a constant sample of students, all of whom completed a Rising Stars assessment in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also administered three teacher surveys: the first focused on the initial period of lockdown, the second focused on the autumn 2020…

This study investigated the impact of school closures for COVID-19 on the attainment of pupils in Key Stage 1 in reading and math, and on the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. It explored pupils' attainment compared with pre-pandemic samples, as well as any changes in attainment over the course of the…