Covid Recovery

2021 Lockdown and beyond

Research has started to be published about the impact of the Covid pandemic upon children’s education.

The impact of school closures on spring 2021 attainment Mainstream state schools in England

May 2021 Katie Blainey, RS Assessment from Hodder Education Timo Hannay, SchoolDash

This paper analyses attainment among primary pupils in England after the third national lockdown and suspension of most in-person teaching from January to early to mid-March 2021. It uses aggregate results from 150,000 primary school tests from over 700 schools taken in late March 2021 before the Easter holidays, provided by RS Assessment from Hodder Education. These tests include Progress in Reading Assessment (PiRA), Progress in Understanding Mathematics Assessment (PUMA) and Progress in Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Assessment (GAPS). This interim paper follows on from the paper published in February 2021, The impact of school closures on autumn 2020 attainment. Key findings, spring 2021:

• There were substantial drops in attainment between spring 2020 and 2021 across all subjects and year groups, more than twice the size of the drops seen at the end of autumn 2020.
• Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) and maths showed the largest declines, representing a gap of on average three months’ progress across all year groups. Reading, on average, showed a two-month gap.
• Younger year groups, Years 1 and 2 in particular, generally showed bigger reductions in attainment than older year groups.
• Children attending schools in more deprived areas, and schools with higher proportions of children receiving free school meals, tended to show greater declines in attainment than their peers. Schools with a high percentage of children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) experienced decreases in scores approximately twice as severe as schools with a low percentage of FSM eligible children.
• During the spring term, regional differences showed no consistent patterns across all year groups and subjects.

This was in contrast to our previous findings at the end of the autumn term. Professor Simon Burgess, University of Bristol “The headline finding is very striking: that the year-on-year fall in attainment to spring 2021 is greater than that at the end of autumn term 2020. Whilst some anecdotal evidence suggested that the most recent school closure period had been more successful in terms of learning, these attainment data suggest some caution in accepting that.”

Therefore, Pot Kiln Primary will be addressing gaps in pupil learning in the following ways in 2021/2022 academic year:

• Pupils going into Year 1 and Year 2 in September 2021 will have access to continuous provision which is play-based learning, and this will support gaps in their learning in all curriculum areas.
• Pupils in Y2-Y6 are in single year group classes in order to focus the curriculum planning on their specific needs as a year group rather than follow mixed aged planning which can complicate curriculum planning, implementation and delivery.
• Science will be taught weekly in all Y1-Y6 classes to make up for the gaps suffered in previous lockdowns in 2021 and 2020. The Science leader has provided teaching staff with access to an excellent planning tool called PLAN2020.
• A new writing strategy will be implemented from September 2021 in order to address gaps in learning in writing.
• A new curriculum plan to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum will be implemented in September 2021 to ensure all year groups cover and will cover in the future, the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum.
• The school begins its journey into Maths Mastery in September 2021 to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Maths from Nursery to Y6.

2021 Lockdown

Following the most recent school closures, we have readjusted our curriculum into weekly blocks to ensure that children have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a subject and catch up on missed learning. The whole school (from Year 1 upwards) completed PURA and PIMA assessments for reading and maths and these have been used to inform teachers of gaps in the learning and areas of weakness. Every child also completed a piece of independent writing which enabled staff to see what individual children need to do in order to move on in their learning. Following these assessments the headteacher met with all teaching staff to identify trends and interventions that will be necessary in order to minimse the impact of this most recent school closure. 
You can find out more about our remote learning provision by clicking here. 

2020 Lockdown

As a school we follow the White Rose Maths Premium scheme of work to teach maths across all year groups.
In light of the Covid pandemic, White Rose have planned each block and fitted in the content that was missed in the prior year as a result of Lockdown.
Before the objective is taught for this year, the one for the child’s prior year group is taught in the form of a ‘Recap Lesson.’ e.g. In Year 4, the (Year 3) recap objective is ‘Adding two 3-digit numbers – not crossing 10 or 100‘ is taught before the Year 4 objective of ‘Adding two 4-digit numbers – no exchanging.’

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