Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how his Department plans to monitor and evaluate the sufficiency of the additional £1.8 billion allocated to school catch-up in the Autumn Budget 2021.

Answered by Robin Walker

The department is undertaking a range of monitoring and evaluation activities to assess COVID-19 catch-up activity, including for the additional £1.8 billion allocated in the autumn Budget 2021.

The department has commissioned Renaissance Learning, and their subcontractor, the Education Policy Institute, to collect data from a sample of schools. This will provide a baseline assessment of lost education and catch-up needs for pupils in schools in England, and to monitor progress over the course of the academic year 2020/21 and Autumn term 2021. We are seeking commercial agreements for further academic years which will help the department understand the impact of the additional £1.8 billion.

The department has a contract with Ipsos MORI, in consortium with Sheffield Hallam University and the Centre for Education and Youth to undertake a mixed-methods study design (including surveys of school leaders, interviews, and case studies) to examine how schools are tackling the issue of lost education. Results from the study will be used to understand how the catch-up premium funds have been spent and how best to support schools to tackle lost education.

The department is also undertaking evaluations of specific education recovery programmes to understand their effectiveness.