School day ‘should be extended’ to make up for lost education

School days should be extended by six hours a week to compensate for the lost weeks of education for Scottish children during the coronavirus outbreak, a think tank has said.
By Jane Bradley
Published 2nd Jul 2020, 07:30 BST
The think tank says time spent at school should be extended by six hours a week.The think tank says time spent at school should be extended by six hours a week.
The think tank says time spent at school should be extended by six hours a week.

The Commission on School Reform, an independent group of education experts set up by the think tank Reform Scotland, has proposed six extra hours per week of catch-up lessons for pupils over the next two years, in order to repair the damage caused by lost education during lockdown.

The Commission’s latest challenge paper - Catching up: the educational losses from Covid-19 - said it was particularly worried about the damage to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. It estimated the costs of staffing the extra hours would be around £100 million a year.

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Professor Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Commission, said: “The start of the new academic year in August is not only about returning children to school - it must be about ensuring that they catch up on the education which has been lost during lockdown.

“While estimates of the loss vary, there is no debate that it exists, and is particularly prevalent amongst the most disadvantaged.”

She added: “Catching up will be difficult and expensive, but not to the degree that it cannot and should not be done. £100m a year is a huge amount of money, but it will be dwarfed by the personal, social and economic cost of the loss of education during lockdown.”

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Related topics:Covid-19