£1bn for extra classes and tutors to help pupils catch up
SCHOOLS will be handed £1billion to fund catch-up classes for children who have lost out due to the lockdown, ministers said last night.
Headteachers will be encouraged to hire private tutors to run intensive after- school classes to help millions of pupils who have lost more than a term of their education since schools were ordered to close in mid-March.
Schools will be given cash to assess all pupils and identify and help those who have fallen furthest behind.
As the Mail revealed yesterday, children could be asked to work a longer school day. And specialist help will be available for who have difficulty adjusting to the return to school after months at home.
Heads will be encouraged to run summer camps on their premises, although they will not be asked to provide formal lessons.
But ministers accept that it could take a year or more for children to catch up on their lost learning, meaning that much of the catch-up will have to take place in term time.
The plans will be unveiled by Boris Johnson and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson later today.
The Prime Minister, who is expected to visit a reopened school to see the challenges first hand, last night stopped short of guaranteeing that all children will be back at school full-time by September. He said: ‘ I am determined to do everything I can to get all children back in school from September, and we will bring forward plans on how this will happen as soon as possible.’
The £1 billion fund includes £350million for a ‘national tutoring programme’ aimed at helping the most disadvantaged children and £650million for measures to help all pupils deemed to have lost out.
The Education Endowment Foundation will provide guidance to heads on a ‘toolkit’ of measures which will qualify for funding. The organisation’s chief executive Becky Francis last night said that tutoring was ‘the catch-up approach supported by the strongest evidence’.
The money will be available to all state primary and secondary schools, but not nurseries or further education colleges.
While heads will be encouraged to hire private tutors, they will not be able to hire regular teachers or pay overtime to existing staff.
A study by UCL’s Institute of Education this week found that two million children have done less than an hour a day of schoolwork during lockdown. Only 17 per cent have done more than fours a day.
Paul Whiteman, of the National Association of Head Teachers, last night welcomed the scale of the funding and the decision to give heads flexibility over how it is spent. ‘This is a considerable sum of money which will empower schools to provide the support that pupils will need as they return to school,’ he said.
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‘It could take a year or more’