Research and evaluation
How local education and children’s services in England have responded to the coronavirus pandemic
‘I believe I speak for all councils when I say that we want to get the very best for our children, making sure that we harness this opportunity to put children at the centre of our recovery, and tackling head on the inequalities that we have seen exacerbated by the pandemic. The recommendations in this report offer ways to help us do that.’
— Councillor Judith Blake, Baroness Blake of Leeds, Leader of Leeds City Council, and Chair, Children and Young People Board, Local Government Association
The brief
In spring 2020, as the world grappled with the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, we started to explore how local education and children’s services were adapting to the challenges of the pandemic, and the first national lockdown in England. We published a blog at the end of April, capturing the reflections of education and children’s services leaders with whom we have worked or were working, and followed this up with another blog in early September. Recognising the importance of both capturing local responses to the pandemic and drawing out the implications, we were commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) to undertake research into how local education and children’s services were responding to the pandemic and the lessons to be learned, both for the immediate response to the pandemic and for long-term recovery and rebuilding.
What did we do?
Through this research, we have worked intensively with eight local areas in England – what we have called “local systems”, reflecting that the inter-dependent partnerships relating to education and children’s services in the local areas covered by local authority (LA) boundaries. Our work has involved the following three sets of activities.
In-depth engagements with leaders of the eight local systems – between October 2020 and February 2021, we held a series of virtual discussions and small group workshops with Directors of Children’s Services, Assistant Directors with responsibility for education and children’s services (including early help and children’s social care), Lead Members for Children’s Services, a small selection of primary, secondary and special school leaders, and team managers from children’s social care and early help teams. In these discussions, colleagues were able to reflect on how their service, setting or team had had to adapt to the pandemic since spring 2020, how the overall local system had responded during this time, and the implications for the immediate and long-term response to the pandemic.
A virtual “roundtable” event for the participating local areas – in February 2021, we brought together LA leaders from the eight local areas for an interactive virtual event. The aim of the virtual roundtable was to test and add to the key messages we had drawn from the initial phases of the research, to share practice and approaches across local areas, and to shape a set of recommendations that our research would put forward.
Parallel discussions with national stakeholders to add to our evidence base – between January and March 2021, we held a series of conversations with leaders of organisations representing children and young people, early years settings, school leaders, independent children’s homes, and Directors of Children’s Services, as well as members of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, and other national bodies. We shared a summary of our emerging messages, and used these to discussions to test and build our evidence base.
What difference did we make?
In March 2021, a year on from the announcement of the first national lockdown in England, we published a report of our research. The research itself has allowed leaders and frontline professionals working in local education and children’s services systems to reflect on, share and learn about how local systems and services have had to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic, as well as to shape recommendations for the immediate task of continuing to deal with the pandemic and its long-term impact. Our report argues strongly that, as we start – and hopefully continue – to move out of the third national lockdown in England, now very much is the time for lessons to be learned so that the worst effects of the pandemic and its associated restrictions can be mitigated and so that education and children’s services can, to borrow a phrase, “build back better”. We hope that the reflections and recommendations we have captured through this research contribute to this task.
What did those involved say about the work?
‘This report tells the story of how councils and their partners responded to the pandemic. It offers important learning both in terms of what went well, and where we still need to do some work if we are to avoid simply returning to the pre-pandemic “normal”. I believe I speak for all councils when I say that we want to get the very best for our children, making sure that we harness this opportunity to put children at the centre of our recovery, and tackling head on the inequalities that we have seen exacerbated by the pandemic. The recommendations in this report offer ways to help us do that.’
— Councillor Judith Blake, Baroness Blake of Leeds, Leader of Leeds City Council, and Chair, Children and Young People Board, Local Government Association