DISADVANTAGED secondary school pupils in the district fell further behind their classmates during the pandemic, new figures show.

The statistics have been described by one education union as "very worrying".

Department for Education figures show 26.2 per cent of disadvantaged children in Bradford district achieved grade five or above in GCSE English and maths in 2021-22, compared to 48.5 per cent for all other children.

It meant the attainment gap was 22.3 percentage points last year – up from 19.3 in 2018-19, the last academic year uninterrupted by Covid-19. Nationally the attainment gap also rose over the same period, but by a smaller amount.

Tom Bright, of the Bradford district National Education Union, said: "I’m not surprised at the figures, but it is very worrying.

"Helping disadvantaged children is more difficult than it appears. If a child is living in poverty, or if there are multiple children to a household, just providing them with a laptop isn’t necessarily the solution.

"They may not have anywhere they can go to study that is quiet. Or potentially they are one amongst several kids, and the new laptop is the cause of more problems rather than enabling the children to access learning.

"There were programmes during the pandemic to get laptops out to students, but if there is no Wi-Fi where they are, then that becomes more of a problem."

He added: "The difference between disadvantaged children and all others is too great. The council talks about narrowing the gap, but the gap is widening so that is a real concern."

MP Philip Davies, whose Shipley constituency includes Cullingworth and Denholme, said: "Some of us warned about the long-term damaging consequences of closing schools during the pandemic – especially when children had such a minimal risk from Covid – and this shows how damaging those school lockdowns were. The lockdowns will go down in history as one of the most idiotic public policies of all time. I am just sorry that so few people at the time wanted to listen when some of us were warning of the damage they were doing."

Nationally, 29.5 per cent of disadvantaged children reached grade five or above in English and maths, whereas 56.8 per cent of all other children achieved the grades.

Education charity SHINE says the link between deprivation and children’s school performance existed long before Covid-19, but that the pandemic had "amplified existing inequities".