About Two million children have done almost no learning during lockdown

More than two million children have done virtually no schoolwork during the lockdown, a study has found.

One in five pupils in the UK – equating to around 2.3 million children – either did no home learning at all or less than one hour a day, according to a new report by University College London's Institute of Education.

Researchers analysed the findings of a study in which over 4,500 British households were asked about their children's schoolwork during the second half of April.

They found that children spent an average of 2.5 hours each day doing schoolwork. This is around half the amount suggested by previous research, which implies that "learning losses are much greater than feared", academics said.

Four in 10 pupils in England are not in regular contact with their teachers, a study has found, amid mounting evidence of wide disparities in the provision of schoolwork during lockdown and fears that millions of children are doing little or nothing at all.

The report for the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) also found that a third of pupils were not engaged with their lessons, fewer than half (42%) had bothered to return their work, and pupils in the most disadvantaged schools were the least likely to be engaged with remote learning.

As concerns grow about the impact of learning loss on a generation of children locked out of school, a separate study for the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education estimated that two million pupils in the UK – around one in five – had done no schoolwork or managed less than an hour a day.