A new national study is tracking what happened to the life chances of pupils who were in Year 11 when the pandemic hit England. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling for an entire cohort of young people, but the scale and shape of the resulting inequalities remain unclear. This project fills that gap by collecting fresh data from pupils, their parents, and their schools, and linking it to official education records. The team behind the study brings together leading expertise in educational inequalities, social mobility, and longitudinal data analysis, and is supported by government agencies and charities to ensure the findings are directly useful for policy. If the research succeeds, it will give policymakers and educators a clear, evidence-based picture of how the pandemic widened gaps by socioeconomic background, gender, and ethnicity. That evidence could shape how schools, universities, and training providers target support to the young people most affected, and inform decisions about how to protect future cohorts from similar disruptions. The study also lays the groundwork for tracking this group as they move into further education and the labour market, revealing longer-term consequences that are not yet visible.
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How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected socioeconomic inequalities in life chances, in terms of short-term effects on educational attainment and well-being, and long-term educational and career outcomes? This study will provide immediate findings to this and related research questions about the impact of the pandemic on educational inequality by SES, gender and ethnicity by designing, analysing, reporting on, and archiving a second annual wave of a high-quality new cohort study of pupils in year 11 in academic year 2020-21 across England. This brand new resource will collect data from pupils, parents and schools, augmented with administrative data from DfE's NPD and other sources. Moreover, it will provide the start of a long-term resource for the research community to explore medium/long-term effects as participants move into further and higher education, and the labour market. Led by Dr Jake Anders, with Professor Lindsey Macmillan and Dr Gill Wyness (UCL CEPEO), Professors Lisa Calderwood and Alissa Goodman (UCL CLS) and Carl Cullinane (Sutton Trust), with Kantar as lead fieldwork agency, the team combines world-leading expertise in educational inequalities, social mobility, analysis of longitudinal data, and the design and management of cohort studies. Our project is supported by key stakeholders, including DfE, ADR UK, EEF, TASO, OfS, and HEAT to ensure co-production of policy-relevant evidence. This study will fill an important gap in understanding the medium and long term effects of COVID-19 on young people completing their education and moving into the labour market at this unprecedented time.
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