The impact of COVID-19 related school closures on foundation skills in reception children.

When primary school children return in the Autumn, they will have missed more than a term of usual school provision. The disruption may exacerbate existing inequalities in academic attainment, and potentially create new ones. This project focuses on the impact of school closures on pupils who are at the important transition point between reception and Year 1.

In reception, through adult-led instruction, children learn literacy, maths, and language skills that provide the foundation for later academic success. Instruction during the school closure period has varied considerably and inequalities in children's learning experiences during the COVID-19 school closures are evident. These include disparities in the support and resources provided by schools (more active forms of support in advantaged areas), access to technology and study space (more limited for disadvantaged families), and the extent to which parents have been able to support their children. Teachers have reported IT problems, difficulty providing usual standards of teaching remotely, and lower engagement in less advantaged children. As a consequence children are now likely to be on different developmental pathways. For some, progress may have maintained or even accelerated, but for others, progress may have stalled and previously learned skills may have been lost.

We urgently need to be able to identify those children whose learning has been most affected by school closures and to better understand the factors that predict poor rates of progress. The usual end of reception EYFS profile has not been completed for this cohort, leaving Year 1 practitioners with limited information to inform support decisions. It is vital that these data are collected as soon as possible. If pupils are unable to recover their rates of learning and secure the foundation skills needed for accessing the school curriculum, then the consequences for their long-term educational outcomes are potentially very serious. In order to provide more differentiated forms of support remotely, in the event of future closures, schools need knowledge of who is likely to be at risk of experiencing the greatest disruption to their learning.

Using data collected by schools before closures, at the start of the Autumn term and later in the spring term, we will investigate the factors that have moderated and mediated pupil progress in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) goals and reading levels. A large, superdiverse city will serve as the research site to ensure that findings can be generalised to the national context. The data will immediately benefit schools in deciding how to allocate catch-up support. We will convey project findings to policy makers and third sector organisations to inform national strategies aimed at remediating the negative impacts of lockdown post-COVID-19 and addressing inequalities in the event of future school closures.