Educational Settings: Reopening

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The Government have made children’s wellbeing and mental health a central part of our response to the pandemic. We have already set up the wellbeing for education return project, backed by £8 million, to help support the wellbeing and resilience of pupils, parents and staff in light of the covid pandemic and lockdown. We are very aware and concerned about the impact that the pandemic has had on the mental wellbeing of so many children in our schools, or at home, trying to learn remotely.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab) [V]]

Before the lockdown, children in the north had missed many more days than their counterparts in the south. Their schools have also suffered a financial crisis, as the pandemic has cost them eye-watering sums of money just to keep things safe. How will the Minister ensure that children in constituencies like mine in Stockton are not left behind, and that their schools will have the extra funding they need to ensure that regional attainment gaps will not be even wider than they were before the pandemic?

[Nick Gibb]

We did secure a very good three-year settlement for school funding with the Treasury, and that was confirmed in the spending review 2020, despite all the other challenges on the Treasury. In addition, we have secured £1 billion of funding for schools for catch-up, and there are also specific funds to help schools tackle and pay the additional costs that they have incurred due to covid—such as the costs incurred between March and July last year and extra staffing costs incurred in November and December last year and in January when the schools went back. Schools that are in difficult financial constraints are always able to talk to their local authority, or to the Education and Skills Funding Agency if they are an academy.