EXPERTS have called for a £100 million-a-year package of new education measures, including the extension of the school day for a two-year period, to enable pupils to catch up on their learning after missing classes over three months of lockdown.

The Commission on School Reform, an independent group of specialists set up by the think tank Reform Scotland, proposes six extra hours per week of classroom lessons for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic year, to repair any damage since the closure of schools to most pupils since 20 March.

Its latest challenge paper – Catching Up: The Educational Losses From Covid-19 – proposes what it sees as a realistic and achievable model for closing the gap.

Among its recommendations are six extra hours of tuition per week for two years, with additional hours to be completed during extended school opening in the late afternoons. It also proposes additional subsidies for disadvantaged children to be managed by head teachers.

It also called for the recruitment of around 19,000 more staff to oversee the catch-up sessions, including the hiring of retired teachers, trainee teachers and other university students. The commission said the measures would cost around £100m per annum.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the commission, has collated research estimating the educational gap caused by school shutdown, as well as the staffing and financial requirements to close it.

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The commission is particularly concerned by the damage done to the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Educational Endowment Foundation estimates that the inequality gap has grown during lockdown on a scale that would usually cover three to four years of primary school.

Paterson 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.

“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.”

The Deputy First Minister and Education Secretary John Swinney last week said schools would re-open as normal on August 11 and without social distancing if the coronavirus remains suppressed.

The move followed plans put forwarded for a part-time or blended model where pupils would attend school for one or two days a week and complete work set by teachers for the rest of the time at home.

He said the decision came after unanticipated progress made on suppressing the coronavirus in Scotland.

However, he warned the re-opening of schools full-time was contingent on progress continuing and said pupils would have to revert to “blended” learning if there was a surge in cases.