Jon Andrews, Head of Analysis at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), said: “Today’s PIRLS results resonate with our own findings that outcomes in reading have been recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. However, our analysis also suggests that in maths, primary school pupils remain around one and a half months behind pre-pandemic norms in their learning.
“Young children’s time in education has been dominated by disruption and it’s clear that efforts to recover children’s learning must be maintained in the months and years ahead. This is particularly true for pupils from low-income backgrounds, who our research continues to show were most severely impacted by the pandemic.”
