Several months of lost schooling could have a devastating impact on a child's education if the time is not correctly made up, an Oxford University report has stated.

The study suggests it is likely for children to continue to fall further behind once they return to school if they do not catch up on what they have missed. 

Jishnu Das and his co-authors of the new Oxford report say the long-term research they conducted by tracking the progress of pupils in the aftermath of a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan may hold important lessons for post-coronavirus teaching.

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The study found that on average, earthquake-affected children's test scores put them 1.5 to 2 years behind their peers in unaffected regions. On top of this, school closures accounted for only 10 percent of learning losses with the other 90 percent of losses occurring once pupils had returned to class.

There is a long-term impact for children too, with average incomes in adulthood up to 15 percent lower and blamed upon the pause in their education.

With aid readily available for the Pakistan children, money was not the reason they fell further behind  – so what was? Das believes that gaps in knowledge during the missed schooling were never filled.

"After a crisis if you go and test kids it may show that they're not doing that well," he tells CGTN. "But that's the tip of the iceberg. If your system doesn't respond to that in some pretty fundamental ways, these kids are going to do less and less well over time."

In other words, if a pupil has not learnt "A" properly because school was closed at the time, they cannot go on to understand B, C or D either. Using the Pakistan case, a few months of closures could turn into two years of learning loss. 

It follows that the younger the child, the more damage is done.Teenagers preparing for key exams are being tested on knowledge accumulated over many years – much of it well before the coronavirus pandemic.

There are important differences between an earthquake and a pandemic, and online education is available for those who can access it. Even so, the full impact of the virus on education will only become clear over time.

What is already becoming apparent is that educators in the UK have growing concerns – not just about the learning gaps left by continued school closures but also that the UK government's early attempts to fill them are not working as their architects intended.

Last summer, the Department for Education set aside $1.4 billion for this specific purpose, with just under half of that money going to state schools in tranches through the 2020/21 academic year. It is down to the discretion of the schools how it is spent, with most going on making sure the premises are as safe as possible against the virus.

Specialist individual tuition

The other $477 million has gone towards setting up a National Tutoring Programme (NTP), via which 32 selected organizations across the UK provide specialist individual tuition for pupils most in need of help.  

Often it is children from more disadvantaged backgrounds that have fallen furthest behind, and the NTP is designed to address this imbalance.

The fund is overseen by a government-funded charity called the Education Endowment Fund. On its website, CEO Becky Francis said: "By harnessing tutoring capacity within the education sector – from undergraduates and trained volunteers to qualified specialist educators – we'll be able to build supply across the country to support tens of thousands of disadvantaged pupils."

While help may be at hand, there appears to be a lack of demand. An investigation carried out by Schools Week found only a small number of schools had applied for the program last autumn.

David Hermitt, former CEO of Learning Alliance, which oversees eight primary and secondary schools in the northwest of England, believes the schools have simply decided to spend their money elsewhere.

He is now doing a doctorate at Keele University looking at how the UK education system can address the legacy of the pandemic.

"The NTP is a subsidized system," he tells CGTN. "So the government is asking schools, out of the minimal amount of funds that they have, to contribute to a system that they have set up where they have chosen who those teachers should be. 

"Some of those schools have looked at the quality of the product they would be buying, and – just like any other procurement – have decided they'd be better off spending their money elsewhere."

Hermitt feels that the government should have put more confidence in local educational leaders.

"The government has demonstrated a lack of trust in its educational leaders by trying to retro-fit a decentralized system with a one-size-fits all approach," he says. "The early signs are that teachers literally are not buying it. The government needs to re-build bridges if it is to have a more effective exit from this pandemic."

Anger and incoherence

Teachers have again been angered at the way that primary schools in the UK were ordered to open for the new term in January and then told to close a few days later.

If the short-term response falls short, the next stage could be what's known as "re-orientation" – adjusting curriculums through the years after school shutdowns, to accommodate previous learning losses. 

This will take time and preparation. Another challenge may be forming a coherent national plan when different regions, schools and pupils have been so unevenly affected.

Those who are looking ahead fear poor decisions now could have dramatic implications for young people down the generations.

"Ten years later you're going to see a 10-15 percent loss in lifetime income for these kids," continues Das.

"That is insanely high – that leaves everything behind that we've ever seen before. It's a different league. That potential loss is what keeps me up at night. That is a loss that many societies will just find really, really hard to sustain."