Download the full report

Summary

This paper analyses attainment among primary pupils in England after the national lockdown and suspension of most in-person teaching during the spring and summer of 2020, followed by the re-opening of most schools in the autumn term. It uses aggregate results from 250,000 primary school tests from over 800 schools taken in November and December 2020 provided by RS Assessment from Hodder Education. These tests include:

• Progress in Reading Assessment (PiRA)
• Progress in Understanding Mathematics Assessment (PUMA)
• Progress in Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Assessment (GAPS)

Key findings

• At the end of the 2020 autumn term, there were measurable declines in attainment compared to the previous year across virtually all subjects and year groups.
• However, the decline in test scores was only about a fifth of that seen at the start of the autumn term, suggesting considerable catch-up during the period between September and December 2020, when most schools had re-opened.
• In general, younger children showed larger decreases in attainment than older children. Among the different subjects, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) showed the largest declines, representing a gap of on average 2 months’ progress across all year groups. This was followed by Maths and then Reading which both, on average, showed a 1-month gap.
• Children who were already low-attaining, those eligible for the Pupil Premium and those attending schools in more deprived areas tended to show greater declines in attainment than their peers. This indicates that pre-existing educational disparities have been exacerbated by school closures and lockdown.
• There were also considerable differences by region. Schools in the Midlands showed much larger average declines in Maths than those in other parts of the country, while schools in the North showed the biggest decreases in GPS scores. Areas in the South tended to show relatively small declines across all subjects.
• Somewhat counterintuitively, Pupil Premium-eligible children at relatively affluent school tended to fare worse than those at more deprived schools. Conversely, non-Pupil Premium children attending schools in deprived neighbourhoods showed larger reductions in attainment than any other group, including children at the same schools who were eligible for the Pupil Premium.

Introduction

Our previous analysis, published in November 2020, examined learning loss during the spring and summer of 2020 by analysing the results of summer tests sat belatedly by pupils when schools re-opened in September and comparing these with the same tests sat by the previous cohort in summer 2019. It showed considerable reductions in average test scores, particularly among younger and disadvantaged pupils, and with certain subjects affected more than others. These changes can be attributed to a combination of the effects of school closures in the spring and summer 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, together with ‘normal’ learning loss during the subsequent summer holiday.

The new analysis presented here provides an update by investigating the results of tests sat at the end of the 2020 autumn term. It therefore provides one of the first comprehensive insights into whether schools and pupils were able to recover at least some of the learning loss during the period of school re-openings from September to December 2020.

This paper analyses aggregate, anonymised results from tests sat by primary pupils at mainstream state schools in England during the 2020 autumn term, and compares these with the results obtained from the previous cohort in autumn 2019. Any differences can therefore be attributed to a combination of:

• The effects of the national lockdown and other restrictions during the spring and summer of 2020, notably the replacement of in-person teaching with remote learning and home schooling.
• The more normal levels of in-person, in-school teaching during the autumn term, albeit with considerable ongoing disruption for some areas, schools and pupils including localised closures and periods of isolation at home.

Download the full report