The Summer Slide

The summer holidays are a chance for students, and their families, to enjoy a well earned break from school! However, it's important that over these 6 weeks students continue with at least one form of consistent learning to avoid falling victim to the effects of the summer slide.

What is the summer slide?

The summer slide, or summer learning loss, is the phenomenon that sees children lose significant reading and maths understanding over the 6 week summer holidays, when they aren't practicing the skills and knowledge they've worked so hard on improving all year. Similar to learning a language or an instrument, or exercising, consistency is important when it comes to learning too.

Researchers first started studying the effects of the summer slide in the 1900's and one review of 39 studies (found here) concluded that 'the summer loss equaled about one month' and that 'the effect of summer break was more detrimental for math than for reading and most detrimental for math computation and spelling'.

More recent research has even found that the loss could be closer to 2 months and 2 and a half months for reading and maths respectively, and that the loss can be cumulative, adding up over time.

Teachers have reported students taking 3-6 weeks at the start of a new school year to relearn knowledge lost over the holidays. And, these losses don't just directly affect maths and reading, but feed into all school subjects and can naturally cause losses in confidence too.

Now this isn't to suggest that your student should be completing a full school day worth of learning time each day of the holidays. It's still important that your student take time to unwind and enjoy the holidays, but just because school stops, doesn't mean learning has to!

So what can you do?

The good news is that research has shown that just a small amount of learning done consistently over the summer holidays is effective at limiting the impacts. This study found that just 2-3 hours of learning per week is effective in preventing the effects of the summer slide.

You can make a commitment to regular learning by encouraging and role modelling reading. Encourage students to read by finding books on topics that interest them - visit the local library or check out recommended book lists (like this one). For reluctant readers, introduce comic books or illustrated novels or help them listen to audiobooks. All forms of engagement with reading helps students spelling, writing and comprehension across all subjects, not just in English.

You can keep students active, visiting places where they can expand their knowledge such as museums and galleries, outdoor experiences and local community activities.

You can encourage students to challenge themselves with brain teasers and puzzles to improve problem solving abilities and memory.

You can find summer classes for your student. Another study, found here, found that students who attended summer reading programmes achieved higher exam grades when returning to school compared to students who didn't undertake extra reading during the holidays.

We want to give our students the opportunity to continue learning over the summer holidays. We also know that it can be challenging for our families to find the time to organise educational activities during the summer holidays. That's why we want to put together a programme of summer workshops and help keep our students' minds active so they can return to school in September without needing to recover any knowledge lost to the summer slide.

Keep an eye out for more information regarding out summer programme or email support@edubridge.org.uk to find out more!