Department for Education written statement – made at on 24 February 2021.
The pandemic and associated restrictions have had a substantial impact on children and young people’s learning. To address this challenge, the government has committed to work with parents, teachers and education providers to develop a long-term plan to make sure pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of this Parliament. We have also appointed Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner to advise on this work and review how evidence-based interventions can be used to address the impact the pandemic has had on learning.
More immediately, we are putting in place a range of additional measures to help children and young people across England. The package of measures gives early years settings, schools and providers of 16-19 education the tools they need to target support to their students, tailored to the differing impact the pandemic has had on each individual.
New measures include:
- An expansion of the National Tutoring Programme for primary and secondary schools, to allow more pupils to benefit from the power of regular tutoring, which has been shown to boost catch up learning by much as 3-5 months at a time.
- An extension of the 16-19 Tuition Fund for a further year to support more students in English, maths and other vocational and academic subjects.
- Support for early language development in the early years, supporting a critical stage of child development.
This £700m package incorporates the £300m announced by the Prime Minister on 27 January and will build on the £1bn support package that was announced in June 2020. This forms part of the wider response to help pupils make up their learning over the course of this Parliament.