Understanding progress in the 2020 to 2021 academic year: Findings from the summer term and summary of all previous findings

NA (site), NA (city), England, United Kingdom

Abstract:

"This report presents the Education Policy Institute and Renaissance Learning's fifth assessment of the learning loss experienced by pupils in England as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on assessment data from Renaissance Learning's Star Reading and Star Maths. Star Assessments are computer-adaptive in nature and adapt to the individual, providing an assessment that identifies gaps in learning from the entirety of the curriculum independent of their current year group. Star assessments also include a standardised measure which takes account of the pupil's age in years and months.

This data has been linked with data held by the Department for Education in the National Pupil Database which has enabled us to carry out analysis by pupil characteristics. In this report we provide estimates of the overall level of learning loss by the end of the summer term in the 2020/21 academic year which is then broken down by various characteristic groups. Furthermore, for the first time, we provide estimates of learning loss by the second half of the autumn term split by degree of pupil-level absence in the autumn term to determine if there is any association between absence and our estimates of learning loss. We also look at the association between school level absence and our estimates of learning loss in the second half of the autumn term and spring term."

The Full Report is available online.

Publication Date:
10/29/2021