Children doing 2.5 hours’ schoolwork a day on average

Children locked down at home in the UK spend an average of 2.5 hours each day doing schoolwork, new research by UCL Institute of Education (IOE) suggests. This figure is about half that suggested by a previous survey, implying that learning losses are much greater than previously thought. In addition, the variability in the amount of schoolwork being done at home is adding to existing regional and socioeconomic inequalities. The study shows one fifth of pupils, which is the equivalent of two million children in the UK, did no schoolwork at home, or less than an hour a day. While 17 per cent put in more than four hours a day. The working paper, published today by LLAKES, uses data collected in the last two weeks of April from a special online survey of respondents in the Understanding Society panel, a UK Household Longitudinal Study covering 4,559 children from households throughout the UK. Study lead, Professor Francis Green (UCL Institute of Education), said: "The closure of schools, and their only-partial re-opening, constitute a potential threat to the educational development of a generation of children.