Education Recovery

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Government wish to thank Sir Kevan for his work. He supports the tutoring and teaching proposals we have outlined. In relation to the methodology, it is not accurate to make a comparison between different jurisdictions. For instance, the £3 billion I have outlined does not include the £400 million that has been spent on remote learning, including on 1.3 million devices, the Covid costs recovery fund, the workforce fund et cetera, so we are not comparing like with like when comparing different jurisdictions.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, we know that this Government have a self-confessed distrust of experts and prefer to shamble from crisis to crisis, yet they appointed the expert Sir Kevan to this vital role and the Prime Minister appeared to be supportive. The money that Sir Kevan’s well-researched report identified to help all children—particularly disadvantaged children—to make up the devastating educational losses of Covid was decimated. Why did the Government appoint Sir Kevan if they had no intention of listening to his authoritative findings?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as I said, the tutoring and support for teaching that I outlined were part of Sir Kevan’s plan. More than £1 billion is going into tutoring for young people. That should pay for 100 million hours for children and young people across England by 2024. Those are disadvantaged young people. Using a “per pupil” analysis is not accurate when certain pots of money have been targeted at, for instance, tutoring disadvantaged children and summer schools are available to secondary schools only.