Education: Return in January

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Absolutely. We managed to secure further funding in the spending review, so the total amount of funding going into catch-up is now just short of £5 billion—I think it is £4.9 billion. Those students who have the least time left in education—that is, 16 to 19-year-olds—are getting, in effect, an additional 40 hours of education, because it is important that we focus on their catch-up. Secondary and primary schools focus very much on disadvantaged students.

The major tutoring programme through which we are delivering 6 million tutoring sessions, each of which is, in effect, 15 hours of tutoring for those kids, means that we are seeing a real difference in outcomes. Tuition used to be the luxury of the very wealthy, but we want to make sure that every child has it available to them and I want parents to make sure that they ask schools what they are doing about the additional tuition that we are making available.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his positive statement. What discussions have been held with the devolved Administrations and the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that the focus is on ensuring that children—particularly those with big exams coming up, whether GCSEs or A-levels—are taught at school? Furthermore, will additional funding be available for schools to run catch-up classes as and when they are needed?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I mentioned earlier the funding settlement in the SR, and when I talk to school leaders, they say that they think that has been a good outcome for us in education. Of course, I also spoke about the £5 billion of catch-up funding. We are sometimes in danger of getting into an arms race in respect of how much we can announce, but my focus is on output: how many children have we managed to get to catch up, whether through the tuition partners scheme or any of the other schemes I have mentioned?