Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support children who were entering the school system at the time of the first lockdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique challenge for teachers, school staff, students and families, particularly for those children who were starting school at the time of the first lockdown. The Department has focused on addressing the effects of the pandemic and the challenges it created in order to improve outcomes for children. The Department’s strategy is focused on ensuring all children can access a high quality education, by providing excellent teachers, high standards and well evidenced, targeted interventions.

To support pupils, the Department has provided significant funding to the Core Schools Budget and is supporting schools to offer well evidenced interventions which are targeted at those most in need. Almost £5 billion was made available for recovery, funding an ambitious multi year programme that includes direct funding to schools, teacher training, and tailored tutoring.

The Department continues to provide support for younger pupils’ literacy. In July 2023, the Department published an updated version of the Reading Framework, providing teachers and school leaders with evidence informed guidance on good practice in reading. It has been expanded from reception and Key Stage 1 to cover Key Stage 2 and 3, to help schools improve reading for all pupils and support them to engage confidently with reading at secondary school.  This is on top of the Department’s wider efforts to give children a strong foundation in reading through the phonics screening check, support for phonics and the work of English Hubs. England came fourth out of 43 comparable countries in the recent PIRLS international survey, and scored significantly above the international and European averages, making it the highest performing country in the western world.

This is supplemented by targeted interventions for those in need. The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) allocates funds to schools based on rates of disadvantage. Since the launch of the NTP in November 2020, nearly four million tutoring courses have been started to date. In addition, the Department’s Accelerator Fund (2021/22), supports the rollout of well evidenced literacy and numeracy programmes in schools, through English Hubs and Maths Hubs.

On top of this, this year’s school funding will total over £57.7 billion. Including the additional funding for teachers’ pay, funding for both mainstream schools and high needs is £1.8 billion higher in 2024/25 compared with 2023/24. The overall Core School Budget will total over £59.6 billion in 2024/25. This is the highest ever level in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.