Government continues to ‘pledge significant investment’ to help children recover missed learning, minister claims
The government continues to “pledge significant packages of investment” to help pupils catch up on missed learning due to the pandemic, Gavin Williamson has claimed.
The education secretary’s comments come after the prime minister’s catch-up tsar Sir Kevan Collins last week resigned, claiming the government failed to provide enough money to fund a proper schools recovery plan.
Sky News understands the proposal put to the Treasury to help schools recover from lost learning during the COVID crisis was worth around £15bn, with 100 extra hours of teaching per pupil.
A £1.4bn package was unveiled by ministers last Wednesday, with the plans denounced as a “damp squib” by unions.
Sir Kevan Collins quit last week as the PM’s catch-up tsar. Pic: PA/House of Commons
Mr Williamson said on Monday that the total recovery package is now worth more than £3bn, including £1bn that will be spent on tutoring courses particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He claimed the fund would help close the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.
In the Commons, the education secretary promised a “tutoring revolution” that would result in six million 15-hour tutoring courses for schoolchildren and two million 15-hour courses for 16 to 19-year-olds who need additional support to catch up.
And he said year 13 pupils would have the option for repeating their final year “where this is appropriate”.
He claimed the evidence showed one course of high-quality tutoring had been proven to boost attainment by three to five months so additional tutoring will be “vital” for young people in recovering the teaching hours lost over the past year.
He told MPs: “Helping our children recover from the impact of the pandemic is an absolute priority. Pupils, parents and staff have all experienced disruption and we know that continuous actions are required to help recover lost
learning.”
He said 250,000 children would receive tutoring this year who would not have had access to it previously, and more than 500,000 would be able to attend summer schools.
Mr Williamson continued “The evidence we have shows that disadvantaged children and those who live in areas that have been particularly hard hit by high COVID rates such as the North East of England and Yorkshire are among those whose learning is most likely to have been affected.
“We have always been clear and will continue to take the action that is required. This is why we continue to pledge significant packages of investment and targeted intervention to help them make up on their lost learning.”
Mr Williamson also thanked Sir Kevan following his departure for “his contribution to these efforts”.
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Labour’s shadow education secretary, Kate Green, told the Commons: “The government failed children and young people.
“They were promised that their education was the prime minister’s number one priority but they’ve been betrayed by a secretary of state who has let them down once again, and by a prime minister who won’t lift a finger for them when it comes to a row with the chancellor about prioritising the investment needed in their future.
“I was frankly embarrassed to hear the Secretary of State proclaim that the funding announced last week would deliver a revolution – from what his government announced it’ll amount to just £50 per pupil for the next three years compared to £1,600 in the USA, £2,500 in the Netherlands.”
Mr Williamson claimed Labour had opposed nearly all of the government’s education reforms, adding that the opposition would “merely parrot what the union paymasters ask it to do”.
Rishi Sunak will try to convince the public he is the person to “fundamentally change the country” and fix Westminster’s “broken system” – despite the fact his party has been in government for 13 years.
In his speech to the Tory Party conference, the prime minister will present himself as a reformer who is prepared to take difficult decisions, unlike opponents, who take “the easy decision, not the right one”.
Mr Sunak will tell the conference hall that politics “doesn’t work the way it should” and that his Labour opponent, Sir Keir Starmer, is “betting on voters’ apathy.”
The speech will round off what has been a chaotic four days at the party’s annual conference in Manchester – an event that has been overshadowed by the announcement that the northern leg of HS2 will not go ahead as originally envisioned.
Instead, services will run between Birmingham and Manchester but they will not be high speed and they will use the existing West Coast Mainline track.
The development prompted Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to accuse the government of treating people in the north as “second-class citizens”.
Election would be ‘massive distraction’ – Tory conference latest
He warned the government: “To pull that plug here in Manchester would show complete contempt to the city region and to the north of England as a whole.”
The Tory mayor for the West Midlands, Andy Street, also warned it would be “an incredible political gaffe” allowing opponents to accuse Mr Sunak of having decided to “shaft the north”.
In his speech, Mr Sunak will rail against “30 years of a political system which incentivises the easy decision, not the right one – 30 years of vested interests standing in the way of change”.
He will reflect on his first year in Number 10 and acknowledge a “feeling that Westminster is a broken system”.
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No high speed link north of Birmingham
“It isn’t anger, it is an exhaustion with politics,” he will say.
“In particular, politicians saying things, and then nothing ever changing.
“And you know what? People are right. Politics doesn’t work the way it should.”
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Sunak: ‘No one wants an election’
And he will say: “Politicians spent more time campaigning for change than actually delivering it.
“Our mission is to fundamentally change our country.”
Read more:
Sunak to announce £30bn of transport spending in conference speech
Braverman says Andrew Boff should be allowed back into conference
As well as the HS2 announcement, Mr Sunak has also been undermined by his predecessor Liz Truss, who drew big conference crowds as she demanded immediate tax cuts to “make Britain grow again”.
Mr Sunak has instead compared himself to the late Baroness Thatcher, who tackled inflation before cutting taxes during her premiership between 1979 and 1990.
While Mr Sunak has repeatedly sought to dodge questions over HS2, he did say on Tuesday that the costs of the project had gone “far beyond” what had been predicted, and the sums involved were “enormous”.
The HS2 scheme was given a budget of £55.7bn in 2015 but costs have ballooned, with an estimate of up to £98bn – in 2019 prices – in 2020.
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