Mind the Gap: Educational Inequalities during Covid-19

School closures have affected roughly 10m children and young people across the UK, interrupting their learning and placing considerably more responsibility for educational activities on the home environment than ever before. This is expected to slow the progress of a whole generation of students and to widen gender, socio-economic, and ethnic inequalities. Addressing widening inequalities is essential to avoid undesirable long-term consequences, including negative labour market and health outcomes leading to lower economic productivity, increased health care costs, and reduced social mobility.

This research project will analyse the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on educational outcomes with a view to understanding whether some groups of students have been more negatively affected than others, including by students' gender, socio-economic background and ethnicity. We will consider how the period of school closures has impacted students' learning inputs, comprising investments of time and resources provided by schools, parents, and the students themselves, and how the attainment of year 10 and year 13 students (and higher education participation of A-level students) has been affected by the move to teacher-assessed grades.