The differential impact of COVID-19 lockdown on pupils’ writing skills

Project Overview

This project explored the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns on pupils’ writing skills, focusing on children in Years 1 to 7.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented impact on education which affected 1.5 billion students across the world. However, research predominantly focused on the impact on reading and maths in primary schools. Writing is a crucial tool for improving reading comprehension, and it is a skill set which will be used throughout people’s lives.

Methodology

Data from a large-scale secondary dataset provided by No-More-Marking (NMM) on over 180,000 primary school pupils across five age cohorts (Year 1 to Year 5) was used to analyse the impact of COVID-19 related interruptions of school-based education in general and allowed for further learning about the differential effects on the acquisition of writing skills.

Key Findings

Missing three months of in-person teaching during COVID-19 had a small effect on how much primary school children improved their writing. On average, pupils made slightly less progress than those who were not affected by school closures (2.3 points less on a scale with a plausible range of 200-800, a mean of 485.7 and a standard deviation of 66.2).

Pupils who received the pupil premium (which can be seen as a person-level indicator of economic disadvantage) tended, on average, to demonstrate the same level of relative learning loss as their non-premium peers, thereby maintaining the pre-existing attainment gap. The pre-existing sex-related attainment gap also remained largely unaffected with girls continuing to outperform boys in writing.

Children at independent schools made better progress during the closures than those at state schools. In some cases, they even improved more than before, while many state school pupils fell further behind. This means the gap between school types may have widened. Additionally, children in better-performing regions of the country were less affected by the closures, suggesting that these areas may be more able to cope with disruption, which could increase regional differences.

Finally, when schools were closed, a child’s background and personal circumstances mattered more than usual, highlighting the need to build resilience and independence in learners.

Policy Implications and Recommendations

• Learning loss from short-term school closures was small, but existing gaps in attainment, especially by income, school type and sex persisted or slightly widened. These gaps need continued attention.
• More research is needed to understand the long-term effects of prolonged or repeated school closures on learning, especially in writing, and to track whether and how pupils recover.
• Future research should explore why certain groups are more affected, using approaches that help explain the causes of learning loss, not just describe it. This will support the development of more effective, targeted interventions.