AN effort at ‘Berlin airlift levels of scale’ will be needed to close the educational gap between children which lockdown has created, a specialist has said.

The attainment gap, the measure of the difference of achievement at school between poor and rich pupils, are likely to have widened throughout the pandemic according to a parliamentary research office.

As Oxfordshire County Council’s Education Scrutiny Committee met on Wednesday, February 3, it heard from Kevin Gordon, the county’s director of children’s services.

Mr Gordon told the committee that bridging this attainment gap after the pandemic would be a real challenge, but might be difficult with the limited amount funding available to councils.

He said the Government would be more likely to focus on funding the NHS.

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The children’s director said: “I think to bridge the sort of attainment gaps we are going to have I think there are partnerships and institutions and systems that have not even been invented yet that we will need to do that.”

He added: “People are thinking it is Berlin airlift levels of scale that we are going to have to face.

"Our normal approached just are not going to cut it, we are going to have to think really differently.”

In September last year, the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, published research which suggested educational disruption caused by Covid will have likely affected poor families more than rich ones.

It added that children from less well-off backgrounds were already more likely to be falling behind in class, which it described as a ‘disadvantage gap’.

Research by POST added throughout the pandemic, children from poorer backgrounds had been less likely to have access to computers, and were less likely to spend at least four hours completing school work while learning from home.

Laptops have been given out to disadvantaged pupils through a government scheme, and via donations.