Analysis paper: preliminary research findings on education recovery

Ahead of our detailed report, we set out the scale of the challenge and the level of ambition required by the government if it is to both reverse the learning loss caused by the pandemic, and also address the deep-rooted inequalities that left many young people acutely vulnerable when schools were required to close to most pupils. [...] ▪ There were also some regional disparities in the level of learning loss in reading, with pupils in the North East and in Yorkshire and the Humber seeing the greatest losses. [...] This will provide us with a much better sense of the scale of learning loss over the period of the pandemic, and should also be used to inform the scale and targeting of the government's recovery plan. [...] This is based on what we’d normally spend, the academic evidence on the effects of spending and the plans of other countries. [...] The estimated long-run economic costs are just the costs of lost learning for today’s school-age children – they do not take into account of the effects of the pandemic on mental-health, well-being, the early years, or post-16 education, which would also require support.