Data from a new survey, conducted between 23 February and 2 March, provides some of the first evidence on how parents view the scale of the challenge of lost learning. It shows that, while 9 in 10 parents are happy to send children back to school on Monday, there are big concerns remaining over lost learning, with some fearing their children will never catch up.

Two-thirds of parents are concerned about lost learning. Among concerned parents with children in primary school, close to half think that their child will have recovered within a term. But a third of concerned parents think that recovery will take a school year or more. At secondary school, 9% of concerned parents think that their child will never make up for the pandemic’s effect on their learning.

Last week’s survey of almost 6,000 parents, run by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, also reveals that parents are now far more confident about the return to school than they were before the summer holidays. The survey found that nine in ten parents in England would send their child back to school on Monday even if the return were optional, compared with fewer than two-thirds of parents last summer.

Angus Phimister, a Research Economist at IFS, said: “The government’s plan to reopen schools in England to all pupils from Monday seems to be popular with parents, with nine in ten saying they would send their child back then even if it weren’t compulsory. Hopefully, this means that the return to school this time around will avoid widening the educational gaps between disadvantaged students and their better-off peers, as it did last summer when many less well-off parents were reluctant to send their children back to school.”

Christine Farquharson, a Senior Research Economist at IFS, said: “Most parents agree that their child has lost out academically over the last year. But while close to half of those concerned think that the damage will be relatively short-lived, one in ten secondary school parents think their child will never catch up. While the tutoring programmes that the government has emphasised are hugely popular with parents, it is hard to believe that the £1.7 billion currently allocated to the recovery is anywhere near enough to meet the scale of this challenge.”

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