Here’s a summary of what we found in the first Horizons survey you took part in, and from earlier studies we carried out:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a big impact on all our lives, but it has affected different groups in society differently. For you and your peers, the biggest impacts have likely – but not exclusively – been on your learning and wellbeing, rather than on your health. Young people have had to adapt to online learning becoming the norm, cancelled exams, and a great deal of uncertainty about their next steps.
In the Horizons survey you participated in, you shed valuable light into how your education was affected from the pandemic in both lockdowns when schools mostly closed, and to what extent things were back to “normal” during the time when schools opened again.
The researchers involved in Horizons had already carried out smaller-scale research with young people about their educational experiences and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were particularly interested in how different groups, depending on gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background, experienced the pandemic differently.
But Horizons is able to provide a much fuller picture on what life has really been like for young people since March 2020. More than 13,000 of you from all across England participated, giving insights into some important questions, including how experiences during the pandemic influenced your mental health and wellbeing, your pathways into sixth form, apprenticeships, training and the workplace, and your plans for the future.
Read on below or click here to see a visual summary of the findings.
We contacted you first for the Horizons study between September 2021 and April 2022, a time period when the Omicron variant was affecting many people. About half of you told us you had already had COVID-19 when we interviewed you. We asked those of you who got COVID-19 about “long COVID” too, where one would be experiencing symptoms more than 4 weeks after first having the virus – and found that 2 in 10 of those suffered from this. Overall, just less than 1 in 10 of you were asked to “shield” at home during the pandemic for health reasons.
Half of you said the pandemic had hit your motivation to study and learn. Around in 8 in 10 of you, and 7 in 10 of your parents, felt that your educational progress had suffered due to the pandemic. Over 1 in 3 of you felt you had fallen behind your classmates as a result of the pandemic.
Based on your responses to the Horizons study, we saw that the number of days you spent per week studying, also the number of hours per day you spent studying, went up from the first to the third national lockdown.
Also, in the first national lockdown, the biggest barrier to learning you mentioned was no live lessons being offered by the school, a problem which was significantly overcome by the third lockdown in early 2021.
Previous research showed that time spent working was reported to be higher by young people who had parents who had been to university. There were differences by gender too. Boys reported shorter time for working compared to girls. In terms of ethnic differences, Black young people reported working a higher number of days per week on average, compared to White young people.
Research further showed that young people also had varied access to the internet and appropriate places to work comfortably whilst at home. In July 2021, University applicants from a working-class background were less likely to have access to internet and a suitable study space at home, compared to those in middle class households.
Previous research showed that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds reported getting parental help less frequently than others. Boys were slightly more likely than girls to receive paid tutoring. There were some ethnic differences too, about getting help from parents and having a paid tutor during school closures. Parents in working class homes were also more likely to say they were struggling to support their child with their schoolwork.
From the Horizons study data, we saw that young people from better-off families were more likely to receive paid tutoring when schools re-opened in 2021. But a quarter of young people from less well-off families received ‘catch up’ tutoring through their school.
Young people from less well-off backgrounds reported more often that they felt “held back a lot”, in our previous research. This feeling was reported more frequently by girls than boys, and was more common among students from Black, Asian or other minority ethnic groups compared to White students.
Your answers showed us that almost two-thirds of you had changed your education plans in some way due to the pandemic, and this was more common if you had had COVID-19, long COVID or were asked to shield. Around 6 in 10 of you had changed your career plans. We also looked at young people from households that faced some economic hardship since March 2020 and found that they were more likely to have changed their education and career plans due to the pandemic and were less likely to apply to university.
A significant amount of missed school time over the past two years has also meant that many of you felt you had missed out on support with applying and preparing for university. Among young people planning on applying to university, those in state schools were less confident that they would be accepted compared to those in private schools.
We found that some schools were slower to adapt to pandemic conditions than others, and, even later on in the pandemic there were different levels of support for remote learning available to young people in Year 11 in different schools. This is an important finding to help understand pandemic impacts on education.
Previous research showed that Year 11 and Year 13 students were affected by the sudden cancellation of GCSE and A Level exams in March 2020. When we asked them, 57% reported that they would have preferred to take exams instead of the ‘calculated grades’ they received.
In the Horizons survey, about a quarter of you received teacher assessed grades that were worse than you expected. When this was the case, some people reported that they had to take different subjects, go to a different school, sixth form or college, or decided to resit some exams, as a result. Pupils at comprehensive schools were more likely to have to change their plans, compared to those at state grammar and independent schools.
We saw in the Horizons study that those of you identifying as female, non-binary, or in another way had poorer mental health than those identifying as males.
We found a similar finding in our previous research. But because we did not get a chance to observe the same students before the pandemic, we cannot say for sure that this difference arose due to the pandemic. However, other research has shown that the wellbeing of girls and women has been more adversely affected by it. Students from ethnic minorities had a lower wellbeing score than White students on average.
We also looked at how your experience of COVID-19 and your mental health were associated from your responses to the Horizons study. Personal experience of having had COVID-19, long COVID and having been asked to shield were all associated with higher risk of ill mental health.
We found that some schools were slower to adapt to pandemic conditions than others, and, even later on in the pandemic there were different levels of support for remote learning available to young people in Year 11 in different schools. This is an important finding to help understand pandemic impacts on education.
It is important to point out gaps between different groups of young people, so that policies can be developed to help students who were disadvantaged during the pandemic. The Horizons study is designed to shed further light on our previous findings, and delves deeper into questions not addressed yet.
Our previous work was based on “cross-sectional” studies, where young people were interviewed once. Although this type of study provides valuable insights, “longitudinal” studies like the Horizons study enable us to keep in touch with you as participants, so we can learn about changes over time and understand more about long-term outcomes. It will help researchers to understand how different experiences in the pandemic affect your experiences over the next few years.
Most research on the effects of the pandemic has only spoken with young people directly. But most young people in Years 11 or 12 live with a parent or guardian. In the Horizons study, we want to speak with your parent or guardian to get their perspective and understand their experiences during the pandemic too. We think this is really important to getting a full picture of how young people’s lives have been affected.
Similarly, your educational experiences during the pandemic were really affected by what your school was able to offer, for example in terms of online lessons. We plan to bring information from schools, both from government data, and through conversations with someone from the school about how they handled the challenges of the pandemic, again to help us get a full picture as part of our research.
We decided to focus specifically on students who left Year 11 in June 2021, because your experience of the pandemic has been particularly acute, with over a year of your schooling and then your GCSEs being disrupted. We know this was a crucial stage of education for you, because the decisions made at this time will have long term impacts. Also, as you are still spending one more year in some kind of education or training, we hope we’ll be able to make suggestions to government that might help your education during this time.
Inequalities in young peoples’ educational experiences and wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic (2021) by Jake Anders, Lindsey Macmillan, Partick Sturgis and Gill Wyness
School Shutdown (2020) by Carl Cullinane and Rebecca Montacute
A-levels and University Access 2021 (2021) by Erica Holt-White and Carl Cullinane
Learning in Lockdown (2021) by Rebecca Montacute and Carl Cullinane
