2m UK pupils do little or no schoolwork during lockdown: study

Learning losses are much greater than previously thought in Britain as about a fifth of Britain's 10 million school children had done no work at home or less than an hour a day during the COVID-19 lockdown, a study by University College London (UCL) has revealed, reported Xinhua.

According to the study, children locked down at home in Britain spend an average of 2.5 hours each day doing schoolwork.

"The closure of schools, and their only-partial re-opening, constitute a potential threat to the educational development of a generation of children. This new evidence from the Understanding Society COVID survey paints a gloomy picture of lost schooling and low amounts of schoolwork at home," said study lead professor Francis Green.

"Everyone is losing out in this generation, some much more than others. Better home schoolwork provision, and better still an early safe return to school for as many as possible, should now become a top priority for government," said Green.

In addition to the amount of time spent on schoolwork, each type of schoolwork also varies across Britain.

The report showed that pupils in London, the south and east of England and Northern Ireland are receiving more offline schoolwork, such as assignments, worksheets and watching videos, than elsewhere in the country.

Offline schoolwork is lowest in the northeast of England, where the proportion receiving four or more daily pieces is just 9 percent.

Online teaching is most common in London, with 12.5 percent of children receiving four or more online lessons or meetings daily, compared with the countrywide average of 7 percent. The top rate of online provision is especially scarce in Wales, where the proportion is just 2 percent, said the report.

However, the report also found that 20 percent of children on free school meals have no access to a computer at home, comparing with 7 percent for other children.

Over 90 percent of all schoolchildren attending private schools had access to a computer at home and were provided with more offline work: 31 percent of private schools provided four or more pieces compared with 22 percent of state schools.

In addition, in half of private schools, pupils spend four or more hours per day on schoolwork, as opposed to just 18 percent of state schools.

Schools in Britain closed when the lockdown began in March and most pupils will not go back until September at the earliest.

The study used data collected in the last two weeks of April from a special online survey of respondents in the Understanding Society panel, a UK Household Longitudinal Study covering 4,559 children from households throughout Britain.