The Department for Education is being heavily criticised today for the way it brought in its controversial free school meals voucher system during the coronavirus lockdown.

“England’s policy of a national voucher scheme was beset by design and implementation flaws, meaning many disadvantaged families faced long delays in accessing financial support,”. the Education Policy Institute (EPI) has concluded.

These “considerable” delays combined with those to free laptop provision during lockdown exacerbated problems that disadvantaged pupils faced during school closures, a new EPI report says.

The study examines the education responses of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during lockdown.

It finds that disadvantaged learners lost out most where there were delays and poor decisions, including ongoing delays and late decisions over FSM and laptop provision in England.

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In contrast, the report says that pupils in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had access to “largely successful” schemes.

The report also reveals that disadvantaged pupils received the least amount of home learning: the difference between high- and low-income families equated to about 75 minutes per day. This means that by the end of June, disadvantaged pupils in England would have had about 15 days of schooling fewer than their more advantaged peers.

This gap was made worse by slow provision of digital devices, including laptops and internet routers, the report highlights, saying that disadvantaged pupils would have missed out on two months of potential online learning time after many only received the devices in mid-late June, giving them five to six weeks of term time left at most.

Home learning varied widely across and within the home nations, the report says. The four daily hours of home learning pupils did on average in London, the South East and South West of England were only attained by 15 per cent or less of pupils in Wales, Scotland, the Midlands and Northern England.

Commenting on the findings, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:  “[The government’s] flip-flopping over free school meal provision during holiday periods, and chaotic delivery of the voucher system, caused great uncertainty and concern for schools and struggling families at a time when they needed assurance.

“A lot of problems could have been avoided if the government had taken a more collaborative approach with the education profession, but schools have often first heard about government policies from briefings to the media.”

The EPI made the point that the most successful policies during the lockdown were helped by having established local infrastructure in place, and that where a system had to be built from scratch, such as England’s delivery of the free school meals scheme, errors and delays were found.

David Laws, executive chairman of the Education Policy Institute, said:  “While the period of school closures this year presented immense challenges, governments should have done far better in delivering policies to support children’s education. All too often, education policies during the lockdown period were poorly implemented and hampered by delays.

“Whether it’s rolling out equipment for home learning or offering financial support to disadvantaged families, the most successful policies were those that relied on existing infrastructure and expertise, rather than hastily-created, unproven delivery models. Devolution also played an important role, given that support delivered at a local level in close partnership with schools seems to have been more effective.”

“The education systems of all four UK nations will be tested once again over the next few months. Given that pupils will have already lost teaching time this year, we cannot afford any more costly policy errors. Governments must follow the evidence on what is proven to work.”

During the height of the pandemic, the report shows, England kept the highest proportion of schools open for vulnerable children and those of key workers: 71 per cent, compared with 34 per cent in Wales, 30 per cent in Northern Ireland and just 24 per cent in Scotland. 

Mr Barton added that schools have often felt that they have been left alone during the pandemic: “Certainly, ASCL’s experience has been that schools have often felt that they have been left to swing in the wind without the support they need from government.

“We say that with particular reference to the Westminster government, whose handling of education policy has been shambolic.

“Even now, we are not convinced it has fully grasped the level of need for laptops and internet connections to support the delivery of remote education to children from disadvantaged homes.”

On the delivery of digital devices for disadvantaged pupils, the report praises Wales for its “commendable” response providing children with laptops and routers by the end of May.

As for England, the report says that as new procurements were needed, the delivery came later. As Tes has previously reported, the quota of laptops pledged in June still had to be completely delivered by the end of August.

Commenting on the report, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said: “It is unacceptable that the most disadvantaged children and young people were the hardest hit by the fallout of the lockdown. Especially as, after years of cuts to school funding and community services, the additional challenges they faced in accessing education and support were well known and should have been planned for.

“In England the procrastination, delays and difficulties over whether those entitled to free school meals would receive them over the summer holidays, and access to laptops and IT for home learning, was scandalous.

“These were known and obvious problems. Not sorting out free school meals effectively and quickly caused a great deal of misery to nearly 2 million children, young people and their families. Child poverty is not inevitable. Effective policy decisions can loosen its grip. We urge government to learn from the costly mistakes, as well as the limited successes, of the last seven months to ensure in the coming months no child is left behind.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “From the start of the pandemic we prioritised the wellbeing of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children, being one of the few countries to keep schools open to those children.

“We supported remote education by supplying extensive online resources, providing almost half a million laptops, routers and other devices to those who need them most.

“We also extended free school meals support during lockdown to eligible children while schools remained closed, with more than £380m worth of supermarket vouchers redeemed.

“Now children are back in school, teachers and heads have flexibility in how they spend their allocation from our £1 billion Covid catch up fund which includes targeted funding for the most disadvantaged.”