‘Making a mockery of schools priority claim’

Leek councillor CHARLOTTE ATKINS hits out at the Government’s £1.4bn education catch-up plan

WITH 1,000 school pupils self-isolating in the Leek area last week, it is clear that the covid pandemic is continuing to cause disruption to education.

Yet the Government’s education catch-up plan was judged to be so totally inadequate that it led to the abrupt resignation of Sir Kevan Collins, the Government’s own education recovery chief.

This is a damning indictment of the Conservatives’ failure to deliver for our nation’s children and help to protect them against the long term, negative impacts of covid lockdown measures.

The Government’s catch-up offer – a £1.4 billion plan – would mean the equivalent of just £22 per child in the average primary school.

It makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s claim that education, or at least state-funded education, is a priority.

Sir Kevan had proposed a landmark investment of £15 billion – ten times the package of support now on offer. The Government’s package falls far short of what is needed and contrasts to other countries, which are spending far more – the United States is investing £1,600 per young person, and the Netherlands £2,500 a head.

Children in England have lost an average of 115 days of face-to-face schooling during the pandemic – the largest loss of any country in Europe, and the biggest education loss suffered in a generation.

The Prime Minister has pledged that no child will be left behind. But that is what is happening.

Ofcom estimates that between 1.14 million and 1.78 million children in the UK have no home access to a laptop, desktop computer or tablet.

The Government scheme to provide these has so far failed to reach a million children who need such a device.

Yet they are essential for studying, information finding, and the development of IT skills and confidence – all vital to their future employment and to the prosperity of our economy.

An education recovery plan provides an opportunity to support students to learn what they need for their next stages of education, rather than just to pass tests.

But supporting every child to get back on track requires a sustained and comprehensive programme of support.

The Government seems intent on keeping pupils in school for longer to overcome gaps in learning caused by covid disruption.

But a study of nearly 3,000 schools in England by a Cambridge University academic and international evidence suggests that, although more instruction time would lead to small improvements in academic progress, extra formal teaching sessions are not the way forward.

Instead, pupils’ learning skills should be developed to help them plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

Children’s mental wellbeing must also be placed at the centre of education. They must have space to play sports, paint, make music and socialise. This will all lead to learning and the development of important life skills.

Yet the Government’s paltry plan provides no additional funding for those activities.

The attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children – already too wide – has grown. But the Government plan is relying too heavily on private providers of tuition, whose quality is variable and not sufficiently monitored to bridge that gap.

Instead, it would be much better to trust our schools, who know their pupils and their communities, with increased staffing budgets to employ additional qualified teachers to support individualised and small group tuition.

But investment in schools has never been high on the Conservative Government’s priorities. The Department for Education’s own survey of 22,000 state schools has exposed a repair bill of £11.4 billion.

The government’s capital spending on schools has declined by 44 per cent from 2009 and 2010 to 2019 and 2020, with schools in the West Midlands having some of the highest bills.

Children and young people cannot learn if they are hungry, but nor can they thrive in crumbling buildings and leaking facilities.