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School closures could see every UK pupil miss out on £40K income over their lifetimes, study finds

Institute for Fiscal Studies call for a ‘massive injection’ of resources to help the country’s 8.7 million pupils

SCHOOL closures could see every pupil in the UK miss out on about £40,000 each in income over their lifetime — a loss totalling £350 billion, according to a damning study.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies findings call for a “massive injection” of resources to help the country’s 8.7 million pupils, many of whom will have missed at least six months of in-person teaching due to Covid-19 disruption.

The findings come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that schools will receive £300m for catch-up tutoring and set March 8 as a possible date for schools to reopen in England.

The report said: “Without significant remedial action, lost learning will translate into reduced productivity, lower incomes, lower tax revenues, higher inequality and potentially expensive social ills.

“The lack of urgency on how to address this problem is deeply worrying.

“The necessary responses are likely to be hard and expensive, but the risks of spending too little and letting wider inequalities take root for generations to come [are worse].”

A variety of options — including allowing students to repeat a whole school year, lengthening the school day, or extending the academic year — should be considered, the IFS paper said.

UK governments have so far allocated just £1.5bn towards catch-up support for pupils, with Mr Johnson last week promising “a long-term plan” to help pupils.

Joint general secretary of the National Education Union Dr Mary Bousted said: “This important and hard-hitting report ought to be a wake-up call to politicians.

“The pandemic will blight the lives of young people for decades to come.

“The government must match its rhetoric with investment [and] do so much more for the nation’s children.”

Shadow education secretary Kate Green said: “The government’s response is simply not up to the scale of the challenge.

“Ministers must urgently set out how to address this catastrophic impact on children and the country.”

A government spokesperson said: “Extended school closures have had a huge impact on pupils’ learning, which will take more than a year to make up.

“The government will work with parents, teachers and schools to develop a long-term plan to make sure pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of this parliament.”

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