Express & Star comment: How can kids catch up?

There has been plenty of lost ground, and they have missed out on all sorts of things, and will still miss out in coming months, being denied the opportunity to sit exams in the normal way.

That is the strange world in which we continue to live, in which at least some children feel sitting exams is an opportunity rather than a burden.

England's chief school inspector, Amanda Spielman, has been airing her thoughts about ways to help children catch up, and what will work and what will be more problematic.

She has talked, not of a pandemic, but "an epidemic of demotivated children" and has stressed that catch-up initiatives must have the support of the parents if they are to work well.

Ideas which have been put forward have included extensions of the school day and shorter summer holidays. The danger she sees is that they could be perceived, not as well-meaning attempts to help pupils who have fallen behind, but as a punishment for them and their parents.

What has happened is not their fault, and yet they could see their holiday time cut. That will be hard to take because all being well this summer looks like being the first real opportunity for families to relax and get about since the pandemic started.

After so many weeks of lockdown everybody is desperate for a break, and hothouse schooling with brainbusting extra lessons during the summer is not going to appeal to many children and their weary families.

Spielman says: "We really need to work with the grain. Without parental support the children who most need help may simply not turn up."

What we saw with the exams affair of last year is that in the circumstances of this pandemic it is not easy to make educational decisions which are right, but it is easy to get the decisions wrong, and sometimes it does not become apparent that they are wrong until the decisions have been made.

The warnings from the chief schools inspector are entirely understandable.

Whatever steps are taken must be well thought out, as the issue is too important for more mistakes to be made.