Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to allocate catch-up funding to further education colleges due to the covid-19 outbreak in the 2021-22 academic year.

We recognise that the disruption that COVID-19 has caused in education settings has had a huge impact on children and young people’s learning.

Overall, the government has committed to a catch-up package worth £1 billion. This includes a ‘Catch-Up Premium’ worth a total of £650 million to support schools to make up for lost teaching time.

The £1 billion catch-up package also includes the £350 million National Tutoring Programme, which includes £96 million for a 16-19 Tuition Fund for the 2020-21 academic year to enable further education and sixth form colleges, school sixth forms and other 16-19 providers of further education to provide small group tuition for students aged 16-19 to help them catch-up.

We are also providing a further £300 million for tutoring, building on the existing £350 million. This funding will support a range of catch-up efforts, including those to support colleges, sixth forms and other FE providers to arrange high quality tuition, building on the £96 million provided last year. Further details will be shared in due course.