Education Endowment Foundation:Tracking attainment without a counterfactual – lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: meta-method review

Tracking attainment without a counterfactual – lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: meta-method review

Review of seven COVID-era attainment studies highlights key methods to set before future research.

Tracking attainment without a counterfactual – lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: A meta-method review

Authors: Stephen R. T. Cromie, Gemma Schwendel, and Pippa Lord

January 2026

Drawing on seven major studies of pupil attainment during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in England, this review highlights important groundwork and methodological considerations that should be established before commissioning future research in challenging or disrupted contexts.

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