Pupils face years of extra homework after Covid-19 pandemic is over
Think tank report suggests ways for student to make up for lost school time during the closures
Scottish school pupils need eight extra hours of tuition a week for two years to make up for lessons lost during the coronavirus lockdown, according to a think tank report.
The Commission on School Reform, which is made up of education academics and is part of Reform Scotland, says further school closures mean extra catch-up work is needed to repair the educational damage of the last year.
Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the commission, updated the group's research from July last year.
Prof Paterson suggested eight extra hours of tuition per week for two years, or five hours per week over three years.
This would be completed by extra hours lessons in the later afternoons, he said, while also calling for additional funding.
Prof Paterson said: "Children in Scotland will have lost around four months of schooling since March - that's around 40% of a normal school year.
"Although thousands of teachers have been providing good quality online learning and parents have done the best they can, the closures have led to a massive loss of learning.
"Many children will have actually gone backwards because such interruptions can lead to them forgetting what they have learnt before.
No need to repeat a year
He told Forth 1: "There have been suggestions of repeating the year, but there are all sorts of practical reasons why that wouldn't work. It would also be deeply demoralising for young people
"Instead of children remaining in school they would go home and be supervised. It might be the teachers - and they'd get paid overtime - but it be other people like recently retired teachers, or trainee teachers who would be paid to supervise these homework clubs.
"If children have to be told by the adults around them that there's going to have to be some extra work in order to catch up with the time that is lost then, yes, many children will resent that. But let's hope they will learn something about ways to overcome really major difficulties in life's paths"
The Scottish Government responded, saying the proposals are "very radical and would be difficult for very many families to accommodate" but it recognises "the need to look at bold ideas."
Union warns against holiday cuts
Scotland's largest teaching union responded arguing more staff and smaller classes are a better way to help children to catch up.
EIS general secretary, Larry Flanagan said: "It's a bit formulaic to calculate it down to how many extra hours are required over how long. We would prefer to see the investment in teachers leading to smaller class sizes so that in a normal school day pupils can get more individual attention.
"Where extra hours are required that should be on a voluntary basis and teachers should be paid at the appropriate rate. The key issue, I think, is how do we expand the teaching workforce."
The union leader also rejected suggestions of extending the school year,.
"Holidays shouldn't be cancelled to create extra time because that would be a shortsighted action which would exhaust even further professionals who have suffered from exessive workload in recent years.
"They work well beyond their normal hours to keep in touch with pupils and develop the materials which are used in online learning and there is a limit to how much can be asked of individuals".