Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the press release entitled Billion pound Covid catch-up plan to tackle impact of lost teaching time, published on gov.uk on 19 June 2020, what steps he is taking to help ensure that head teachers have the autonomy to make decisions on how the £650 million for primary and secondary schools is spent.

Schools are receiving a £650 million catch up premium to make up for the education that has been lost due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Education Endowment Foundation has published a COVID-19 recovery guide to support school leaders and staff. It provides guidance and information on the most effective strategies to catch up on lost education, and will allow schools to decide on how to best use this funding to support their pupils and their outcomes. The guidance can be found here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/.

We know that each school will have different needs as a result of this outbreak and we trust headteachers to make the appropriate decisions for their students to ensure that this money is spent wisely.