Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to help current Year 10 pupils catch up on learning time lost as a result of recent school closures.

The Government recognises that extended school and college restrictions have had a substantial impact on children and young people’s education and are committed to helping pupils make up lost education due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

We appointed Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner to oversee the long-term plan to help schools support pupils make up their education over the course of this Parliament. Sir Kevan will engage with parents, pupils, and teachers in the development of this broader approach and review how evidence-based interventions can be used to address the impact the COVID-19 outbreak has had. We will share further details in due course.

As an immediate step, on the 24 February, we committed an additional £700 million to support summer schools, tutoring, early language interventions and additional support to schools to help pupils make up their education. This builds on the £1 billion catch-up package announced in June 2020, which included a catch-up premium, shared across state primary and secondary schools to support schools to make up for lost teaching time over this academic year. It also includes the National Tutoring Programme which provides schools with access to high-quality, subsidised tuition in this academic year and next.

Within the £700 million catch-up package, £200 million will be available to secondary schools to deliver a two-week summer school. Although we recommend a focus on incoming year 7 pupils, schools are also free to engage pupils in other years, should they identify a particular need.

A new one-off £302 million recovery premium will also be available for state primary and secondary schools, which includes £22 million to scale up evidenced approaches, building on the pupil premium, to further support pupils who need it most.

In addition, an expansion of the National Tutoring Programme for 5-16 year olds will ensure we can support even more pupils in 2021/22. The programme will support schools by providing approved tuition partners that offer subsidised tuition to schools and schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas will be supported to employ in-house academic mentors to provide tuition to their pupils.