Covid-19: Schools

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this debate, and both he and my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on their introductory speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives is right to pay tribute to the extraordinary way in which teachers, support staff and headteachers in the 50-plus schools in his constituency and elsewhere around the country have responded to the demands placed on them by the covid pandemic and by the Government’s response to tackling it.

From introducing covid security measures in our schools over the summer holidays, maintaining and enforcing the new rules in schools during the summer term, increased hygiene—I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend’s commitment on the personal hygiene front —increased hand washing, one-way systems and staggered breaks and lunch times for all pupils, while at the same time helping their pupils to catch up from the lockdown from March to July, to teaching the curriculum and continuing the work to prepare and improve the curriculum for online teaching, these have been demanding times for the profession. With high attendance rates and more than 99% of schools open throughout the autumn term, we should all have enormous admiration for the achievements of schools and their staff. Indeed, I very well remember visiting some of the schools in my hon. Friend’s constituency just a few short years ago and meeting some of the very same teachers and support staff he referred to in his speech.

However, the situation has now changed again. It is vital that we take action, given the very high transmission rates, so since 5 January we have asked schools to limit attendance during the lockdown, because the Government are taking every possible measure to reduce overall social contacts, bringing down cases in the community and protecting the NHS. This will undoubtedly have a big impact on children and schools once again. We will continue to review the restrictions on schools and ensure that children get back to face-to-face education as soon as possible, which I know is the preference of my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. I suspect that deep down it is also the preference of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, despite all the support and the enjoyment he has with his children being at home.

In the meantime, we are doing everything we can to ensure that children continue to learn and make progress. Schools have always been required to assess and manage risk. Before the end of the summer term, we published clear guidance for the autumn so that they could put in place proportionate control measures in response to their risk assessments, while still providing their pupils with a high-quality education. The 11 control measures run from enhanced cleaning and ventilating occupied spaces to managing confirmed cases of the virus. This is a fast-moving situation, and as the pandemic has evolved, guidance for schools has been needed on a range of issues. I am aware of feedback on guidance, and I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives that we have made changes to improve our approach in response, making clear any changes at the start of documents, so that school staff can quickly see updates, without having to re-read the whole document.

During the current period of national restrictions we have asked schools to allow only vulnerable children and young people, and the children of critical workers to attend. The guidance is clear that families where at least one parent’s work is critical can send their child to school, if required. If parents and carers who are critical workers can keep their children at home, they should do so. We know that every school will have a different number of children of critical workers who need to attend, and it is important that on-site provision is provided for these pupils, and schools should not limit attendance of these groups. That is because we are reducing overall social contact across areas and the country, rather than individually by each institution. The Department publishes weekly national level data on pupil attendance, and the data for 11 January shows that attendance in state primary schools in England was at 20% and attendance in state secondaries was at 4%, although this will of course vary on a school-by-school basis, as my hon. Friend has pointed out.

On 15 December, we announced the roll-out of rapid result asymptomatic testing in secondary schools for the workforce and for pupils, and I am pleased to hear that schools in St Ives are already benefiting from that. This month, we are also rolling out that programme to primary school staff. Primary schools should expect to receive a delivery of home testing kits from today. Schools can access workforce funding and military support to help them implement the programme, as well as engage volunteers through one of the national volunteering networks. Where schools are unable to identify enough staff or volunteers, they can call our helpline for additional support, which is provided on a case-by-case basis. Testing those without symptoms is vital in reducing the spread of covid-19, and these lateral flow tests will be able to indicate in just half an hour whether somebody has the virus. Participation in the programme requires the consent of the person being tested or their parents, if they are under 16. Pupils who are not taking part in testing will still be able to attend school as normal, where they are eligible to attend, unless of course they develop symptoms or need to self-isolate after being in close contact with somebody who has tested positive. All those steps help make schools as safe as possible and will help limit the amount of time that pupils miss from the classroom in the future.

As my hon. Friend will know, the Government have a catch-up package worth £1 billion, including a catch-up premium, worth a total of £650 million, to support schools to make up for the impact of time outside the classroom. This academic year the forecast catch-up premium for Cornwall will be £5.8 million. Alongside that, we have a new £350 million national tutoring programme for disadvantaged pupils, which will increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people, helping to accelerate their academic progress and tackling the attainment gap.

It is crucial that all children continue to learn during the lockdown, so we have updated the remote education guidance for schools to clarify and strengthen expectations, drawing on our evolving understanding of best practice in remote education. The Government are spending £400 million on remote education to help schools and colleges meet those expectations. That includes three quarters of a million laptops and tablets that have already been delivered to schools and local authorities since the start of the pandemic. A comprehensive package of support is available and the Department has also made £4.84 million available for the Oak National Academy, both for the summer term of the academic year 2019-20 and for the 2020-21 academic year, to provide video lessons in a broad range of subjects for reception to year 11, and there have been 32 million views of those very high-quality lessons from the Oak National Academy.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives raised the issue of funding, as he so often does on behalf of his constituents and schools. School budgets are rising by £2.6 billion in 2020-21, £4.8 billion in 2021-22 and £7.1 billion in 2022-23, compared with 2019-20. On average, schools are attracting 4.2% more per pupil in this financial year, compared with 2019-20, and will attract 3.3% more per pupil in 2021-22. This increase in funding will help schools with costs associated with the covid outbreak.

We have also provided additional funding to schools on top of existing budgets to cover unavoidable costs incurred between March and July 2020 due to the covid outbreak that could not be met from their budgets. Schools in my hon. Friend’s constituency have received £94,238 so far through the first claims window of the covid exceptional costs fund, which supported schools with the most significant costs they faced between March and July. Schools nationally have received payments of more than £100 million for all claims within the published scope of the fund, and we are currently processing claims from the second window, which ran in December. We have also promised a further £78 million to support schools with the costs of rolling out testing this term.

We know that children and young people may be experiencing a wide variety of emotions in response to the coronavirus outbreak, such as anxiety, stress or low mood, and the return to remote learning for most will limit their social interaction with their peers. Some pupils may need support from their school to readjust— either to return to learning at home or to being in school without some of their friends. Our £8 million wellbeing-for-education-return training programme is supporting staff in schools and colleges to respond to the additional pressures that schools may be feeling as a direct result of the pandemic. My hon. Friends will be delighted to know that there are similar schemes to help teachers’ wellbeing during this very pressured time.

Ultimately, it is our ambition to ensure that all pupils have the chance to make up for education lost during the pandemic, so that they can reach their potential in the long term. We are doing everything in our power so that schools can make this happen. I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said about prioritising vaccines for teachers. The Government are considering that, along with other critical workers in the second phase of the roll-out of the pandemic.

School leaders, teachers and support staff have done truly tremendous work since the start of the pandemic to maintain high-quality education for all their pupils. I thank them once again for their exceptional efforts.

Question put and agreed to.