The £350 billion home-schooling question
Education research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
Blog Series
Covid-19 has transformed the way we live, work, research, teach and learn. This ongoing series of blogs addresses the crisis as it affects education in all its diversity.
Our contributors summarise new research, find new applications for existing scholarship, and share opinions, experiences and advice. Our intention is that this collection helps all stakeholders in education to navigate this new landscape, and to thrive both within and beyond it.
We continue to invite contributions to the BERA Blog that address the Covid-19 crisis, including but by no means limited to issues like distance learning and educational technology; the logistical, methodological and ethical challenges of conducting research remotely; and the effects of the crisis on staffing, funding and policy across the sector. Tell our readership how you’ve been impacted, how we can and should respond, and what we haven’t thought of yet. See our submissions policy page for details of how to contribute.
Education research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
On February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...
The Covid-19 pandemic has created economic and social instability for many people in Britain and around the world. As such, we might consider it an experience of ‘collective trauma’, combining...
In this blog we seek to understand the impact that the sudden and enforced move to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the perceptions of teacher educators in initial teacher...
The disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...
In my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...
Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...
Alarm has been expressed about the likely impact of Covid-19 on children’s academic achievement with terms such as ‘closing the gap’, ‘learning loss’ and ‘catch up’ permeating...
While disruption to educational ‘norms’ has received coverage since the public lockdown, less attention has been shown to the impact of the public lockdown on postgraduate research students....
Learning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...
Covid-19 has presented schools with a series of dilemmas since lockdown began, and continues to do so as schools seek to reopen to all their pupils. There have been few reliable sources of advice...
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life across the world. In January 2020, we could not have imagined that in just a few months as many as 138 countries would...
This year coronavirus has put unprecedented pressure on our schools. It has been inspiring, as we continued to support our young people through the global pandemic, to see so many creative...
At the time of writing, as we move through the Covid-19 pandemic, most children in the UK have been away from school for nearly half a year, no end-of-year public examinations have taken place,...
Globally, the impact of Covid-19 has been truly unprecedented and unforeseen. In all sectors of society, in all nations, the almost immediate, total suspension of everything we know has left many...
Many children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...
As school leaders plan the return to school following the global pandemic, it is crucial that their educational decisions are informed by research into the everyday realities of enforced home...
When we went into ‘lockdown’ because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were denied access to face-to-face education, educators had to swiftly improvise. By transferring existing educational...
Long before Covid-19 altered the way learning and teaching takes place, the subject of physical education (PE) was somewhat marginalised in the school curriculum. Within the UK, as elsewhere,...
Teachers across the world have never had to work so hard or so creatively. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, professional development that would otherwise have taken years has been crammed...
Covid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...
Foundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...
In response to the current Covid-19 outbreak, universities across Australia quickly moved to restructure the delivery of their courses that customarily took place on campus. We are both first year...
I am writing this post from both a parental and scientific perspective. Firstly, from a parental stance, SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent coronavirus 19 has undoubtedly driven us into situations that...
Previously on the BERA blog (Kidd, 2020a) I have drawn attention to the work of Glade Primary School, an east-London school in the borough of Redbridge, England, and their ‘agile’ adoption of...
‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...
The ideas presented in this blog were developed in dialogue with a number of English sexuality education organizations, including acetUK, It Happens, Susie March, Think for Yourself, Teaching...
‘Doing less, making learning fun and looking after everyone’s wellbeing’
On Friday 29 May 2020, ITV ran a story on the London regional news about a primary school whose pupils were reported to be ‘traveling the world’ through the adoption of video conferencing (VC)...
Children’s education and wellbeing are profoundly influenced by the circumstances into which they are born. Being from a wealthier family is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Poverty...
As the world grapples with the short-to-longer-term imperative to identify distance- and remote-learning alternatives to previously face-to-face instruction, I am struck that some of the key...
The pandemic that has gripped the UK has meant that uncertainty becoming central to our way of life. With borders closed, migration curtailed and social distancing policies in place, this...
As recent posts on the BERA Blog have demonstrated, in the quiet chaos of lockdown a range of taken-for-granted assumptions (Courtney et al., 2020), competencies (Zhou & Wolstencroft, 2020) and...
Almost all dimensions of human experience have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, and governments around the world have adopted stringent measures to stop the spread of the virus. One such...
In the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school, and to...
Discussion among researchers at the moment is mostly punctuated with references to Covid-19. From across the various fields that my research cross-sections – primary English, children’s...
Within this current context, the term ‘home schooling’ is often deployed in a blanket way to describe what is likely to be a plethora of activities and methods of teaching and learning largely...
The Covid-19 pandemic means that countless students and educational staff are expected to continue their work from home. The worldwide quarantine has been a game-changer, blurring the boundaries...
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all going through a period unlike any we have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, students can’t attend school and universities – and...
In a previous blog (published yesterday) I reflected on the danger of researchers going beyond the evidence in presenting policy-relevant findings: putting forward empirical conclusions as cogent...
Last year I conducted a research project with 12 early-career primary teachers. While exploring their sense of purpose, I found that many teachers were driven by a commitment to preparing their...
Education has been practised and conceptualised internationally in ways that demonstrate its increasing privatisation, enabled through a dependency on numerical data and an adherence to a social...
As the whole planet finds itself engulfed in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the public needs to be well equipped with the skills to deal with scientific...
James Derounian of the Association of National Teaching Fellows offers tips on delivering quality distance-learning for quarantined students.
If we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...
If we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...
Continue reading blog postEducation has been practised and conceptualised internationally in ways that demonstrate its increasing privatisation, enabled through a dependency on numerical data and an adherence to a social...
Continue reading blog postJames Derounian of the Association of National Teaching Fellows offers tips on delivering quality distance-learning for quarantined students.
Continue reading blog postAs the whole planet finds itself engulfed in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the public needs to be well equipped with the skills to deal with scientific...
Continue reading blog postLast year I conducted a research project with 12 early-career primary teachers. While exploring their sense of purpose, I found that many teachers were driven by a commitment to preparing their...
Continue reading blog postIn a previous blog (published yesterday) I reflected on the danger of researchers going beyond the evidence in presenting policy-relevant findings: putting forward empirical conclusions as cogent...
Continue reading blog postDue to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all going through a period unlike any we have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, students can’t attend school and universities – and...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic means that countless students and educational staff are expected to continue their work from home. The worldwide quarantine has been a game-changer, blurring the boundaries...
Continue reading blog postWithin this current context, the term ‘home schooling’ is often deployed in a blanket way to describe what is likely to be a plethora of activities and methods of teaching and learning largely...
Continue reading blog postDiscussion among researchers at the moment is mostly punctuated with references to Covid-19. From across the various fields that my research cross-sections – primary English, children’s...
Continue reading blog postIn the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school, and to...
Continue reading blog postAlmost all dimensions of human experience have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, and governments around the world have adopted stringent measures to stop the spread of the virus. One such...
Continue reading blog postAs recent posts on the BERA Blog have demonstrated, in the quiet chaos of lockdown a range of taken-for-granted assumptions (Courtney et al., 2020), competencies (Zhou & Wolstencroft, 2020) and...
Continue reading blog postThe pandemic that has gripped the UK has meant that uncertainty becoming central to our way of life. With borders closed, migration curtailed and social distancing policies in place, this...
Continue reading blog postChildren’s education and wellbeing are profoundly influenced by the circumstances into which they are born. Being from a wealthier family is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Poverty...
Continue reading blog postAs the world grapples with the short-to-longer-term imperative to identify distance- and remote-learning alternatives to previously face-to-face instruction, I am struck that some of the key...
Continue reading blog postOn Friday 29 May 2020, ITV ran a story on the London regional news about a primary school whose pupils were reported to be ‘traveling the world’ through the adoption of video conferencing (VC)...
Continue reading blog post‘Doing less, making learning fun and looking after everyone’s wellbeing’
Continue reading blog post‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...
Continue reading blog postThe ideas presented in this blog were developed in dialogue with a number of English sexuality education organizations, including acetUK, It Happens, Susie March, Think for Yourself, Teaching...
Continue reading blog postPreviously on the BERA blog (Kidd, 2020a) I have drawn attention to the work of Glade Primary School, an east-London school in the borough of Redbridge, England, and their ‘agile’ adoption of...
Continue reading blog postI am writing this post from both a parental and scientific perspective. Firstly, from a parental stance, SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent coronavirus 19 has undoubtedly driven us into situations that...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 reveals an urgent need to focus on an area of worldwide educational significance: the importance for schools of engaging with uncertainty as a key facet of education. In recent decades, a...
Continue reading blog postIn response to the current Covid-19 outbreak, universities across Australia quickly moved to restructure the delivery of their courses that customarily took place on campus. We are both first year...
Continue reading blog postFoundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...
Continue reading blog postTeachers across the world have never had to work so hard or so creatively. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, professional development that would otherwise have taken years has been crammed...
Continue reading blog postLong before Covid-19 altered the way learning and teaching takes place, the subject of physical education (PE) was somewhat marginalised in the school curriculum. Within the UK, as elsewhere,...
Continue reading blog postWhen we went into ‘lockdown’ because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were denied access to face-to-face education, educators had to swiftly improvise. By transferring existing educational...
Continue reading blog postAs school leaders plan the return to school following the global pandemic, it is crucial that their educational decisions are informed by research into the everyday realities of enforced home...
Continue reading blog postMany children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...
Continue reading blog postGlobally, the impact of Covid-19 has been truly unprecedented and unforeseen. In all sectors of society, in all nations, the almost immediate, total suspension of everything we know has left many...
Continue reading blog postAt the time of writing, as we move through the Covid-19 pandemic, most children in the UK have been away from school for nearly half a year, no end-of-year public examinations have taken place,...
Continue reading blog postThis year coronavirus has put unprecedented pressure on our schools. It has been inspiring, as we continued to support our young people through the global pandemic, to see so many creative...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life across the world. In January 2020, we could not have imagined that in just a few months as many as 138 countries would...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 has presented schools with a series of dilemmas since lockdown began, and continues to do so as schools seek to reopen to all their pupils. There have been few reliable sources of advice...
Continue reading blog postDido Harding was appointed as a Conservative peer (Baroness Harding of Winscombe) by then prime minister David Cameron in 2014. She is head of the NHS test and trace programme, and has been...
Continue reading blog postWhile disruption to educational ‘norms’ has received coverage since the public lockdown, less attention has been shown to the impact of the public lockdown on postgraduate research students....
Continue reading blog postLearning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...
Continue reading blog postAlarm has been expressed about the likely impact of Covid-19 on children’s academic achievement with terms such as ‘closing the gap’, ‘learning loss’ and ‘catch up’ permeating...
Continue reading blog postEven before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...
Continue reading blog postIn my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...
Continue reading blog postThe disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...
Continue reading blog postIn this blog we seek to understand the impact that the sudden and enforced move to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the perceptions of teacher educators in initial teacher...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has created economic and social instability for many people in Britain and around the world. As such, we might consider it an experience of ‘collective trauma’, combining...
Continue reading blog postOn February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...
Continue reading blog postEducation research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
Continue reading blog postAs part of the gradual lifting of lockdown measures in England, following the ‘second wave’ of the Covid-19 pandemic here, schools reopen wholesale today, 8 March 2021. For many parents and...
Continue reading blog postIn Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches exacerbate divisions, push ambition through brute force, hierarchy and power; their interventions end in the wicked destruction of leadership potential and...
Continue reading blog postSince the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, children across the world have experienced significant changes to their lives. Save the Children (2020, p. 4) report that an estimated 99 per cent of...
Continue reading blog postThe evidence is clear that motivated, knowledgeable and experienced staff are key to supporting children’s development in early years settings (see for example Melhuish, Ereky-Stevens, &...
Continue reading blog postThe strains on the education system caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have forced many parents to have to contend with significant changes in their daily routines. A study of seven countries in...
Continue reading blog postHigh-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a form of exercise that involves repeated bouts of near-maximal effort often followed by short (60 seconds) recovery times (ACSM, 2014). HIIT is popular...
Continue reading blog postReflections on presenting at the BERA ECR Network symposium, January 2021
Continue reading blog postPupils with English as an additional language (EAL) attract a great deal of interest among policymakers, school leaders and teachers, yet there are relatively few studies that have examined EAL...
Continue reading blog postIn December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...
Continue reading blog postNew teachers might have been expected to experience particular difficulties in moving to remote emergency teaching in March 2020. Funded by a BERA Covid-19 small grant project, we are exploring in...
Continue reading blog postDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, many teachers around the globe found themselves forced to teach in remote or online environments. This blog post explores initial findings about the assessment data...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has given new currency to the idea of resilience, in terms of adapting to and recovering from adversity. However, in recent years the discourse of resilience has become...
Continue reading blog postPaul Willis, in Learning to Labour (Willis, 1977), joins his teenage research subjects in their extracurricular trips to the pub, in the name of holistic ethnography. I used to use this anecdote...
Continue reading blog postConcerns around lost learning have been a pervasive and recurrent theme of late – all of which can be traced back to the closing of schools over the past year in response to the Covid-19...
Continue reading blog postIn this BERA-funded project we investigated how teachers adapted to the ‘new normal’ of online delivery from March 2020 until the reopening of schools on 8 March 2021. Surveys undertaken in...
Continue reading blog postThe advent of the Covid-19 pandemic affected all educational institutions without warning. From our experience, it seems that special schools, particularly those that work with young people with...
Continue reading blog postGovernment decisions made during Covid-19 resulted in the closure of many schools, forcing teachers to move online to ensure that students continued their studies. Described as ‘emergency...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted everyday life around the world. In the UK, lockdowns have resulted in the closure of schools to most children for two prolonged periods: March to summer...
Continue reading blog postNewly qualified teachers (NQTs) have arguably always had tough challenges to overcome; two in every five NQTs experience mental health problems (Education Support Network, 2018). Challenges cited...
Continue reading blog postIn a newly published study (Done & Knowler, 2021a) we investigated the strategic leadership role of special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) in planning for Covid-19 with particular...
Continue reading blog postIn April 2020, senior managers from Kids Planet Day Nurseries[1] approached researchers at York St John University to explore the impact of Covid-19 on the young children in their care. Two...
Continue reading blog postResearch on the Covid-19 pandemic draws attention to its unequal impacts on differently positioned families, particularly highlighting the acute struggles of disadvantaged families (see for...
Continue reading blog postSchool closures implemented during the pandemic to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 meant that parents had to take on home-schooling and extra childcare responsibilities. These responsibilities...
Continue reading blog postMaths anxiety (MA) plays a role in educational disparities and the gender pay gap, yet it is not often addressed at the chalkface. Covid-induced school disruption may have made learning for...
Continue reading blog postThe peaks and troughs of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to impact on almost every aspect of our daily lives, and initial teacher education (ITE) is by no means an exception. Reflecting on changes...
Continue reading blog postThe ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused most postgraduate research (PGR) students to encounter research restrictions and undertake their research duties from home (see Burridge et al., 2020)....
Continue reading blog postAs the school year in England begins once again against an evolving Covid-19 backdrop, we ask what this latest set of circumstances means for issues of inclusion, including which students will...
Continue reading blog postThere are reports that an October lockdown might be used as a ‘firebreak’ if cases of the Covid-19 virus rise too high with the return of schools and universities (Mason & Davis, 2021). As...
Continue reading blog postEveryone who has worked in schools and in initial teacher education (ITE) will remember 2020–21 as one of significant disruption and challenge, and none more so than those whose professional...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 presented a set of challenges for UK universities, and where ‘business as usual’ was expected, staff working practices intensified. The impact of this has not been equal, with the...
Continue reading blog postLived experiences do not vanish into thin air like a mirage. They can be revisited under certain conditions using a relevant qualitative method. Simply asserting that a one-to-one in-depth...
Continue reading blog postAlthough there is a well-established literature on the international student experience (Schartner & Young, 2020), we know relatively little about what ‘being an international student’ has...
Continue reading blog postOne-quarter of all families in the UK are single-parent families (Gingerbread, 2019), yet literature suggests that single-parent students face challenges in accessing, participating in and...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 has led to significant disruption in the established systems and practices of preparing new teachers. This blog post reports on the findings and recommendations from an Economic and...
Continue reading blog postTransition from primary to secondary school is considered a key milestone in children’s education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, children experienced additional changes in their lives...
Continue reading blog post