Education

U.K.’s ‘Covid Generation’ Face Lifetime Earnings Loss


The U.K.’s ‘Covid Generation’ face a lifetime loss of earnings as a result of the disruption to their education by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Children now in school are likely to lose between £16,000 and £46,000 each ($22,000 to $63,000) over the course of their working lives, around 1-3% of the total they could expect to earn.

This amounts to a total loss of earnings of between £78bn to £463bn ($107bn to $637bn), according to a report published today by the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank.

And the knock-on impact means substantial reductions in tax to pay for public services, and lower productivity and economic growth.

Children have faced more than 18 months of disruption to their education as the pandemic forced schools to switch to remote teaching.

By the time schools in England reopened fully in March, primary age children (5-11) were around three and a half months behind where they would be expected to be in math, and 2.2 months in reading, according to the EPI.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were likely to be even further behind, as are children in more deprived parts of the North of England and the Midlands.

And these gaps are unlikely to be closed unless significant extra funding is put into catch-up schemes, according to EPI chief executive Natalie Perera.

The £3.1bn ($4.3bn) committed by the U.K. government so far amounts to just £310 per child ($430), compared with the £2,100 per student ($2,900) in the Netherlands and £1,800 ($2,500) in the U.S.

Instead, the government needs to commit to around £13.5bn over three years to tackle the learning loss, or risk long-term damage to both children’s life chances and the national finances, according to the EPI.

Failure to address the divide would also hamper the government’s efforts at “levelling up”, to reduce inequalities between the English regions.

“Without a bold education recovery funding settlement targeted at those pupils who need it most, any wider plans from the government to address longstanding regional inequalities are consigned to fail,” said Perera.

EPI analysts used modelling commissioned by the Department for Education, estimating lifetime earnings for children now in education of between £780,000 ($1.1m) and £1.5m ($2.1m), to forecast the likely loss if action is not taken to close the learning gaps.

But the estimated loss is likely to be a “highly conservative” estimate of the true long-term costs of lost learning, the EPI predicts.

“The level of lost learning seen by pupils in England is considerable,” said Luke Sibieta, co-author of the report and research fellow at the EPI.

“Left unaddressed, our modelling shows that these losses may have adverse consequences for millions of pupils, negatively affecting their lifetime earnings. In total, this could cost the government hundreds of billions in national income.”

New Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi is said to have asked the Treasury for additional funds to support the national education recovery plan, ahead of the spending review, results of which will be revealed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer next Wednesday.



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.