Literacy and numeracy issues facing schools following Covid pandemic

Ted Peskett Local Democracy Reporter

Issues with literacy and numeracy have increased among children according to the head of a Welsh primary school where many entrants are non-verbal.

The head teacher of Oak Field Primary School in Barry, Luke Tweedley, told members of Vale of Glamorgan Council’s start well scrutiny committee recently that more than 90% of three-year-olds coming to them are below the expected level for literacy and numeracy.

A report published by the Welsh Government in 2023 recognised the numeracy and literacy challenge schools face and said the Covid-19 pandemic played a big part in creating it.

One member of Vale of Glamorgan Council’s start well scrutiny committee, Cllr Helen Payne, asked Mr Tweedley at a meeting on Monday, July 7, whether poor literacy and numeracy rates were a regular occurrence in schools now.

He responded: “I think it’s definitely increased since Covid and there could be a whole host of factors that are at play.

“At our school, and I know… schools within our cluster, they’ve seen an increase in the needs of children as they start with us.”

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Immersion

The head teacher went on to say that despite this challenge children at Oak Fields go on to make “really good progress with us” and that this is down to creating “language-rich environments”.

He added: “[This is] surrounding and immersing children in language, really good role models.

“Role modelling a range of language which is appropriate for them and once you develop those language models in children the children are modelling to each other.

“What we’ve started to do before children start with us [is]… language and play sessions.

“We have them come in and they work with our classroom teacher so we allow our nursery teacher to come out and work with parents and we send home story sacks with puppets and we show the parents how to use them.

“We are trying to encourage the use of stories and talking to the children and in some cases putting down the phone.

“Putting down the doom-scrolling and maintaining eye contact and showing them even non-verbal queues, showing them what emotion looks like in a positive way.”

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Playing catch-up

Another Welsh Government report published in 2025 shows that there was an improvement in attainment for numeracy assessments among year three and year six pupils for 2023-24 compared with 2022-23.

Overall for numeracy assessments there was lower attainment in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 relative to 2018-19.

The data showed a similar pattern for English reading assessments with attainment being higher in 2023-24 for year three and six pupils compared with the previous year.

Mr Tweedley went on to say: “We are doing our best to work with families before they arrive [with] us and I know that Flying Start are doing a huge amount of work trying to work with families as well.

“Once the children are in that environment…. [they] do make really good progress but they might not leave us at the expected level for their age.

“That’s because they’ve come in below the expected level. It’s really hard to play catch-up.”