Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what representations he has received on the (a) adequacy of the Government’s summer catch-up provision, and (b) suitability of providers who have applied for contracts to provide such programmes.

The Government is committed to helping children and young people make up education lost as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

In January 2021, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, committed to work with parents, teachers and pupils to develop a long-term plan to help pupils make up their education over the course of this Parliament. As an immediate step to support nurseries, schools and colleges, on 24 February the Department committed an additional £700 million to support summer schools, tutoring, early language interventions, and additional support to schools to help pupils make up their education. This builds on the £1 billion from last year and brings the total available to £1.7 billion.

The £1 billion package includes a £650 million catch up premium to support schools in helping their pupils to make up lost education. The funding will be issued in three tranches, two of which have already been delivered. The third, and largest (£271 million), will be delivered in the summer term. Schools can use catch up premium funding to support pupils to catch up in the summer. To help schools make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students, which is available here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/#nav-covid-19-support-guide-for-schools1. The EEF have also published a further school planning guide: 2020 to 2021, available to view here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/guide-to-supporting-schools-planning/.

The £700 million announcement in February also included a new one-off recovery premium of £302 million for the next academic year. The recovery premium will build on the pupil premium to further support pupils who need it most. Schools’ allocations from the recovery premium will be based on the number of their pupils who are eligible for the pupil premium. Schools should use the recovery premium, alongside their existing catch up premium, and their pupil premium as a single total from which to prioritise support for pupils according to their need, including to support catch up in the summer.

£200 million will be made available to secondary schools to deliver a face to face summer school. A mix of academic and enrichment activities should help the pupils involved to recover some of their lost education and should also support their mental health and wellbeing. The Department has not contracted any providers to deliver summer schools. Schools will be funded directly and they are free to resource the support to best meet the needs of the school and its pupils. The Department will shortly publish guidance that includes signposts to additional support for schools should they need it.

The Department has made an additional £630,000 available for Oak National Academy to support education recovery by developing free, high-quality resources that will be available online throughout the summer holidays. This optional suite of resources covering Reception to Year 11 will provide support to pupils who have missed important curriculum content. It can be used by teachers or holiday clubs when setting holiday homework or running summer schools.

In addition, the Department’s holiday activities and food programme will make up to £220 million available to local authorities to coordinate free holiday activities, including healthy food and enriching activities, during the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays in 2021. The programme will be available to children who receive benefits-related free school meals in every local authority in England. The programme is delivered through grants to local authorities, and local authorities will therefore hold any contracts with local providers.

In summer 2020, as part of the initial £1 billion catch-up package, the Government launched a £350 million National Tutoring Programme (NTP). The NTP is an ambitious scheme which provides additional, targeted support for those children and young people who have been hardest hit from disruption to their education as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

As part of the £700 million plan announced on 24 February, this included £200 million to expand our successful tutoring programmes. This will fund an £83 million expansion of the National Tutoring Programme for 5–16-year-olds in 2021/22, which has been shown to boost catch up education by much as 3-5 months, 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.