School students are now almost entirely back to regular classes, but the battle isn’t yet won. What should students be doing once they return to school? Opportunistic progressives now seek to exploit the pandemic for — you guessed it — a ‘new deal’ for education. 

Unnecessary — and in many cases, prolonged — school closures have devastated Australian students’ educations, and the economy with it. 

Recent CIS research has estimated the damage to students’ progress in literacy and numeracy — with disadvantaged students falling up to three weeks further behind over the period schools were closed.  

The world-leading Education Endowment Foundation agrees that closures have crippled academic progress — concluding the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers could widen by around 36%. Veteran German researcher, Ludger Wößmann, has also warned of persistent impacts — resulting in reduced lifetime earnings for children impacted by...