Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to periodically review the £700 million education recovery package for children and young people, announced on 24 February, to ensure that those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are being supported.

Understanding the impact of lost education on attainment and progress is a key research priority for the government, and an independent research and assessment agency has been commissioned to monitor progress over the course of the year and help us target support.

The department knows that the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak has been felt most heavily by disadvantaged children and young people, and so it is vital that we target support towards these pupils.

In February 2021, the department appointed Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner to advise how to help pupils make up their education over the course of this Parliament. As an immediate step, we have invested a further £700 million to support education recovery measures (bringing total investment in catch up to over £1.7 billion).

The package contains a new one-off £302 million Recovery Premium (which includes £22 million to scale up evidenced approaches) for state primary and secondary schools in the 2021/22 academic year. Building on the pupil premium, the Recovery Premium will help schools to deliver evidence-based approaches for supporting the most disadvantaged pupils.

£200 million will be used to expand our successful tutoring programmes. The National Tutoring Programme was first announced in June 2020 and has increased access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people, helping to accelerate their academic progress and tackling the attainment gap between them and their peers. This investment will fund an £83 million expansion of the National Tutoring Programme for 5–16-year-olds in 2021/22, in order to reach hundreds of thousands more pupils next academic year; a £102 million extension of the 16-19 Tuition Fund for a further year to support more students in English, maths and other vocational and academic subjects; and £18 million funding to support language development in the early years, supporting a critical stage of child development.