Today, the government announces the first set of measures for its education recovery plan. Jonathan Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of the National Literacy Trust reflects on the announcement.
It has been announced as part of the government’s long-term plans to boost education recovery, that children and young people across England will be offered up to 100 million hours of free tuition to help them catch up on lost learning, a total of £1.4 billion is being invested, including £1 billion to support up to 6 million, 15-hour tutoring courses for disadvantaged school children, and the 16-19 tuition fund will be expanded, targeting key subjects such as maths and English.
What’s more, £400 million will help give early years practitioners and 500,000 school teachers across the country training and support, and schools and colleges will be funded to give some year 13 students the option to repeat their final year.
This is in addition to the £1.7 billion already announced to help children catch up, designated to summer schools and mental health support, bringing total investment to over £3 billion.
Jonathan Douglas CBE, said: “We know from emerging evidence and our own work across schools and communities, that children have fallen behind in their learning over the past year - especially children living in our most disadvantaged communities. While we welcome today’s announcement that Government has taken steps to ensure that tutoring will be targeted to pupils who are most in need of support, the new package of measures, along with the £1.7 billion in new funding, to address lost learning still falls drastically short of the £15 billion required.
"We will be supporting the case for increases in funding for any future catch-up proposals and will submit our own recommendations ahead of the next spending review. We will also be leveraging millions of pounds worth of support from our business partners to support education recovery in schools. If we are to successfully tackle growing inequalities in education, improve pupil outcomes and their life chances the whole of government must see recovery as a national priority- the foundation of the government’s levelling-up agenda. We very much hope that today’s education recovery plan is only one step forward among many to come.”
For full information on the announcement, please visit: www.gov.uk/government/news/huge-expansion-of-tutoring-in-next-step-of-education-recovery
The National Literacy Trust offer both free and paid-for specialised training opportunities, targeted interventions and a wide range of programmes and resources to equip teachers and practitioners with the best strategies and tools for enabling children to build on the skills they have, move forward from recent challenges and catch-up on learning.
To explore the National Literacy Trust's Education Recovery area, visit: literacytrust.org.uk/education-recovery/