Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:56 pm on 25 February 2021.
Summer schools are part of the catch-up programme. The hon. Gentleman has got his point on the record.
In many ways, the announcement on Monday about the return of schools was naming a date. That was the easy part. The challenge now is how we do that in the cautious, irreversible way that I have spoken about. I have reached out and heard from many of my constituency headteachers in the past 48 hours, and I have to say that the negativity and “yes, but what about” drain from some national figures on this subject is strikingly different from talking to my constituency heads, and the practical Winchester good sense I have seen from them. Let me quote one, who said:
“There is certainly a lot of work to be done before the 8th of March, but there is a sense of positivity and relief of our pupils coming back to school”,
and that is typical of what I have heard. I have been interested to hear, as there is much talk during the debate about safety in schools, comments such as:
“I am very happy to report that we have had no covid cases in school since September”,
or,
“no confirmed adult or child covid cases since this all started almost a year ago (not tempting fate).”
That of course will not be the case everywhere. There are a terrible tales and terrible examples, but I cannot but be honest and report to the House that that is what I have had from some of my constituency heads. None of that is to say that we do not have problems—of course we do—and I will just touch on three and then let others speak.
Testing for covid is right up there for my secondaries. Whether we like it or not, the return will be staggered for many in the week of
Secondly, in terms of testing in the academic sense, Minister, can we please be brave and face the issue of statutory testing at primary levels at this time? Having now missed two years of these tests, this may be the moment to draw breath and check that they are what we want to do, and that they are there for the right reasons.
Thirdly, on the catch-up programme, which I know we will hear more about from the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow, if and when we can get him back online, I welcome the one-off recovery premium and the fact that it is for schools to use “as they feel best”, as per the Government’s statement, but we would be wrong to rest on that. It cannot remain a one-off.
On the national tutoring programme, £300 million is a lot of money. I know that the Department for Education has said that it has been shown to boost catch-up learning by as much as three to five months at a time, but I want to be reassured—this may be one for my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee in due course—that external tutors, who do not know the pupils, their profile as learners or the individual strategies used by an individual school to ensure consistency in the approach to that learning, continue to be the best way to spend that large amount of money.
On mental health and anxiety, I think that educational catch-up in my area will be okay in the short to medium term, but the anxiety and the mental health challenge that I am hearing about, and which I referred to at the start, is structural. There is a structural weakness that is undermining it all. I have heard from so many constituents and parents who have said that, of course, they are pleased that schools are going back from
Finally, on Monday, I mentioned organised outdoor sport—not school sport, which I know is allowed from
I hope, in opening the debate, that I have framed some of the key issues and that we can now proceed without incident.