Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much and what proportion of the £1bn fund announced by the Prime Minister on 18 June 2020 to help children catch up on what they have missed while schools have been closed as a result of the covid-19 outbreak will be allocated to Halton.

The Government has announced a package of support worth £1 billion to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all children and young people make up for lost teaching time, with extra support in the form of a tutoring programme for those who need it most.

This package of measures includes:

• A universal catch up premium for schools of £650 million to help them make up for lost teaching time.
• A new £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged pupils.

The universal catch up premium will be paid as a grant to all state-funded primary and secondary schools in England over the 2020/21 academic year.

This premium will be in addition to schools’ core budgets for 2020-21. We will confirm the timetable for publishing institution-level allocations in due course.